New York SBDC Research Network

Many people don’t know much about Native Americans, even though their contributions to society are significant. And that’s especially true when it comes to the world of business; in some states, Native American-run businesses employ thousands of people and generate millions in revenue. In Oklahoma, the Chickasaw Nation paid $318 million to employees in 2011, and counting auxiliary affiliated jobs, that total was about $528 million. Following are some of the more prominent Native American businesses: Read more

WASHINGTON – A new award has been added by the U.S. Small Business Administration in celebration of National Small Business Week 2013. The Small Business Exporter of the Year award will recognize a small business that is successfully engaged in exporting. A national award winner will be selected from among state award winners from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. The announcement of the Small Business Exporter of the Year award will be made during World Trade Month in May 2013. Detailed information including eligibility and required documents for the national Small Business Exporter of the Year award are available. Nominations for the Small Business Exporter of the Year award are being accepted through the online portal, launched last month , and in hard copy. The dedicated web portal was designed for easy submission and tracking of award nominees for Small Business Week 2013, and is actively accepting nominatio

New this year, you could get a tax break when installing solar energy equipment in a commercial building, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance announced . Beginning January 1, 2013, the State's 4% sales tax won't be charged on the sale or installation of commercial solar energy systems equipment. The exemption also applies to the 3/8% sales tax imposed in the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District. The new law also allows cities and counties, including New York City, to provide a similar exemption from their local sales taxes.

Google is introducing Friday 15 , a series of talks with industry experts designed to help small businesses succeed online. It promises to provide small business solutions in 15 minutes or less. You have an opportunity to join the live Hangout with Google on Friday, January 11, 2013 at 11am PST/2pm EST. The topic will be Google Trends; an industry expert explains how to use Google Trends to grow your business. Visit www.gybo.com/friday15 to learn how to join the Hangout, sign up for email reminders, and watch previously recorded sessions.

On September 17, 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) implemented seven provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA). The new rules are intended to spur innovation and economic growth by streamlining the patent application process and introducing new procedures to ensure patent quality. Other provisions of the AIA will go into effect on March 16, 2013, including the shift to a first-inventor-to-file system. Read the USPTO press release here . Other provisions of the AIA will go into effect on March 16, 2013, including the shift to a first-inventor-to-file system. USPTO announced a new, user-friendly, web-based search tool to make its patent and trademark examining manuals more accessible to the public. Also, this week, the USPTO and the European Patent Office (EPO) announced the formal launch of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system , a global classification system for patent documents.

From Open Forum : Over 500,000 businesses get started in the U.S. every year, and unfortunately not everyone is a success. (Many of them are bad ideas, and poorly executed.) If you’re thinking of starting up a business in 2013, heed our warning and watch out for these 13 bad business ideas. While you’re at it, check out the best business ideas that we think are winners for the coming year.

The advisors of the Mid-Hudson SBDC regularly contribute business advice articles to the Times Record Herald.  Check out the wide variety of subjects that they cover here: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BIZ1011

From SmallBusinessNewz It is no secret that mobile applications have changed everyday life. People do business, set family reminders, deposit checks, track workouts and spend hours and hours of leisure time in mobile app platforms. Mobile software developer Flurry reported more than a trillion unique app events in November – a number simply unheard of even two years ago. Some food for thought: in January of 2011, around 100 billion mobile applications existed. At this writing, that number has just passed the 1,000 billion mark. Is it time for your business to have a mobile app? Consumers spend more time with mobile apps than they do watching television. Flurry reports that mobile apps are quickly closing in on Web browsing, which has stayed stable over the past year at an average of 168 minutes per day per consumer, while mobile applications rose from 94 to 127 minutes. Television watching has stayed steady at between 70 to 72 minutes per day for the past three years. It makes se

As 2012 comes to a close, individuals and businesses need to remember some key tax provisions for making contributions to charity. The IRS offers these reminders for year-end giving: To deduct monetary donations you must have a bank record or written document from the charity stating the name of the charity, the contribution amount and the date. Contributions are deductible in the year made, even if the credit card bill isn't paid or the check isn't cashed until 2013. Only donations made to qualified organizations are tax deductible. Make sure the organization you want to donate to is qualified before making any contribution. Individuals must itemize their deductions on Form 1040 Schedule A or use a short form (Form 1040A and 1040EZ) to claim the standard deduction. Find more year-end giving tips from the IRS.

Learn how to dramatically improve your business by determining which of these vital four factors is most in need of repair.

Steps to Starting a Business, Writing a Business Plan, and More

During software engineer Ryan McGeary’s nine years working at seven startups, he has weathered contentious dramas, legal battles, and broken friendships stemming from arguments about how equity should be shared among founders and early investors... "There’s got to be a better way" to handle equity stakes, McGeary says. Recently he stumbled across just that: so-called dynamic equity splits, an idea making the rounds among Chicago startups. The concept is described in a book called Slicing Pie, by Mike Moyer, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and founder of venture capital firm Lake Shark Ventures. More from Business Week .

The November-December issue of The Small Business Advocate reflects on many of the Office of Advocacy’s 2012 activities and scans the 2013 horizon. It includes reports on the office’s fall regulatory activities, new research on small business retirement planning, innovation events in Region III, and a tip of the hat to outgoing members of Congress, Senator Olympia Snowe, and Rep. Donald Manzullo. In This Issue: 2012 Accomplishments, 2013 Horizons Fall Regulatory Roundup Mortgage Rules Patent Revisions Critical Habitat Analyses Basel III Standards Small Business Set-Asides Reports Examine Small Business Retirement Preparation

The U.S. Small Business Administration is seeking nominations for awards honoring the critical economic role small businesses play in federally funded research and development through SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Two awards will be given: the “Hall of Fame” award recognizing companies that have an extended period of extraordinary success of research, innovation, and product commercialization; and another, the “Tibbetts Award” with two categories, one for companies that have participated in the SBIR/STTR programs, and another for individuals who advocate on behalf of the programs. The Tibbetts Awards are named after Roland Tibbetts, who was instrumental in developing SBIR, a highly competitive program to ensure small businesses get a chance to compete for federal research and development funding, along with the opportunities it provides to profit from commercialization of the technologies they develop. Th

From SmallBusinessNewz : For some time now I’ve been suggesting that social media as we’ve come to address it over the last few years doesn’t really matter anymore because it just is. We’ve given up on seeing it as some separate practice and accepted that it’s simply a function of marketing that must be integrated. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if social behavior, not social media, is actually much more than we’ve made of it. We’ve bolted certain socially enabled practices on to our businesses to provide greater reach, customer service and the pretense of connection, but I wonder if we’ve stopped dreadfully short of the true potential of social. Even those that preach social strategy are generally talking about finding ways to use social tactics to support existing business strategies and models. My belief is that the real opportunity is to build a fully social business model, one that addresses the total picture of social behavior. One that moves beyond social tactics to a pl