New York SBDC Research Network

There was an article in the April 2, 2009 Wall Street Journal entitled What Do Labels Really Tell You? - As Eco-Seals Proliferate, So Do Doubts by Gwendolyn Bounds. From the article: As green marketing has proliferated, so has the number of "eco-labels" competing to be the environmental equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval. According to the Web site ecolabelling.org, there are more than 300 such labels putting a green stamp on everything from cosmetics and seafood to bird-friendly coffee... Some label programs...require independent verification of product manufacturers' green claims. But many others don't, partly because of cost and manpower, they say. The result: increasing confusion among consumers about the veracity of green marketing promises and a growing sense that the federal government may need to take a stronger role in shaping standards people widely recognize and trust... Some advocating a federal role point to organic food as a potential mod...

I saw this article- THE NUMBERS GUY: Weddings Are Not The Budget Drains Some Surveys Suggest Carl Bialik. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 24, 2007. pg. B.1 Abstract (Summary) The Knot takes steps to ensure that its respondents are representative in terms of geography and household income. But research manager Kristyn Clement acknowledges that The Knot's members may not be typical spenders. "Our market is brides who are planning an actual wedding and putting resources toward that event," Ms. Clement says. "Are there brides who are not spending money on their weddings? Potentially." Rebecca Mead, staff writer at Conde Nast's New Yorker magazine, writes in her new book, "One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding," that the survey covered only brides who had made themselves known to the Bridal Group and thereby "already demonstrated an interest in having the kind of wedding that bridal magazines promote....

In an article in yesterday's (September 18, 2007) New York Times by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, the paper announced that it would stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight night, "two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives." "In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free." The story indicated that while the Times had generated about $20 million from 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating, the paper didn't release how much traffic would be generated by the search engines, visitors who ...

The Wall Street Journal had one of those tests to determine whether someone meets the "psychological profile of entrepreneurs here . But, as the article notes, "Not everybody agrees there is an entrepreneurial personality type." So, I'm looking for some AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION here. What tests, if any, do you use to gauge entrepreneurial propensities? Do you think they are useful or just a bunch of hooey? (If you're curious about my results, block the space below with your computer mouse.) Achievement 50 Affiliation 47 Power 39 Your score: You're motivated primarily by achievement. Most entrepreneurial people are driven by the need to achieve.

I read an interesting story last month: "How Pepsi Opened Door to Diversity; A 1940s All-Black Team Targeted a New Market And Broke a Barrier" by Stephanie Capparell, in the Wall Street Journal: January 9, 2007. pg. B.1., adapted from her new book, The Real Pepsi Challenge: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business . Here's the article abstract: Their jobs turned most of the men into Pepsi fanatics. Said team member [Jean Emmons]: "All of my friends had to buy Pepsi. I kept stockpiles of Pepsi in my house. All the places I went had to have Pepsi. If I was out with someone and they ordered Coke, I might have thrown a glass of water in their face. . . . My wife would say, 'I think you're going crazy -- Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi!'" He launched three major press campaigns from 1948 to 1951. For the first, he found accomplished African-Americans to profile for a "Leaders in Their Fields" series -- about 20 names in all...

That's the question posed in the Wall Street Journal last week. The article by Kelly K. Spors, subtitled "Studies Find Often Time Wasted Gathering Data With No Link to Success", appeared in the January 9 edition, on page B-9. The abstract reads: Amar Bhide, a Columbia University entrepreneurship professor, found that 41% of Inc. magazine's 1989 list of the 500 fastest-growing private firms didn't have business plans and 26% had only rudimentary plans. A follow-up by the magazine in 2002 found the numbers without a plan have remained pretty much the same. Many business concepts are "transitional in nature," meaning there are competitive advantages to starting the business quickly and by the time you write a full business plan "the opportunity will be gone." Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, says most studies that discount business-planning are flawed because they don't correct for business failure rates, only accou...

IE 7 is here - got in our office last week -with all sorts of new features such as: Phishing Filter Proactively warns and helps protect you against potential or known fraudulent sites and blocks the site if appropriate. The opt-in filter is updated several times per hour using the latest security information from Microsoft and several industry partners. This means, starting early next year, the address bar in Internet Explorer 7 will turn green when surfing to a legitimate Web site--but only in some cases, not all. "But the new system adopted for IE 7 has been causing friction, too. Initially, only corporations will be able to get the [green color] online trust indicator--a rule that shuts out smaller businesses. While the CA Browser Forum is still working on final guidelines that would include all legitimate Web sites, those could take a while to complete." Microsoft's Phishing Filter turns address bars yellow if on suspicious sites and red on confirmed phishing sites. ...