New York SBDC Research Network

I read a little blurb in the July issue of Entrepreneur Magazine called Temper, Temper! Apparently a Rice University research team has discovered moody office mates contribute to overall creativity and innovation. "When people are in good moods all the time, it can lead to complacency," says Jennifer M. George, professor of management and psychology at Rice University and co-author of the study. "A negative mood can give you that push to put forth more effort." The article offers some tips for managers of less than sunny employees.

Zip code maps are helpful things in our line of business. Compiling data on certain geographies that aren't defined by city, town or county borders requires an understanding of how those communitites fit together, and zip codes can be a useful tool. So, here's a resource that combines the U.S. Census Bureau 2006FE Tiger/Line ZIP Code Tabulation Areas with Google maps, resulting in several types of maps, including zip code maps and hybrid zip code maps. The hybrids show roads and towns below colorful zip code boundaries, and you can also click for a satelite view (without zip codes) to see the lay of the land.

This month, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced the SBA’s Patriot Express Pilot Loan Initiative for veterans and members of the military community wanting to establish or expand small businesses. Here's a Hispanic Business.com article that links to the new section of the SBA website.

Years ago I received a call from a director, looking for models from other communities regarding the conversion of dilapidated or depressed parts of towns. I thought of that immediately when I heard of a new website, called SustainLane . I wished this was around back then. Here's how it describes itself (from their home page): "Our open-source knowledge base speeds discovery, research and networking with more than 105 best practice documents and a secure directory of participating government officials from over 400 cities, counties and states." This "knowledge base" is searchable by a number of categories. Many of them focus on environmental issues, but there is a distinct category called "Economic Development". If you click on this, as of today the first document you'll see is a description of San Diego's "Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Program". Again, this would have been handy to have a few years ago. There are many others. Ke...

" The Institute For Integrated Rural Tourism works with communities and individuals to develop tourism systems in which rural people and rural life patterns form the foundation of the touristic experience." This organization offers consulting and marketing services but also provides publications and workshops. One column is: Standing Out In The Crowded Tourism Market By Todd Comen, Associate Professor, Hospitality and Tourism Management, Johnson State College, Vermont, USA. They've also put together a book called: Integrated Rural Tourism Weaving Low Impact Tourism into the Economic Fabric OF Rural Communities Their web presentation: Telling the story of rural life patterns through the tourism experience .

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.

Every so often, McAfee (the company that provides popular security software for home and business computers) evaluates the safety of the links generated by the most popular search engines. In early June, they released " The State of Search Engines " as a 2007 follow-up to similar reports written in 2006. If you've ever run a site analysis using McAfee, you'll know that they use a color-coded system to flag sites that feature security risks such as spyware loaders, high-volume spam generators, hyper pop-up ad creation, etc. This particular study theorizes that people rely on search engines to get what they want. So, the company reviews just how frequently search engines expose you to sites that they consider dangerous to your computer's security. Here are their key findings: Overall, 4.0% of search results link to risky Web sites, which marks an improvement from 5.0% in May 2006. Dangerous sites are found in search results of all 5 of the top US search engines ...