This year’s event promises to be very special with live demos, real-life mobile application stars who ‘wowed’ the world with their mobile applications to win fame and fortune, and much more. Also, explore how Nokia’s new Ovi Store ensures developers have easy access to publish applications and content to millions of Nokia devices through a unified publishing channel. Get to know the dynamic technology platforms for creating truly compelling user experiences. Get to learn new skills, new connections, and new ideas to create tomorrow’s technologies.

You can find more details at http://bit.ly/FNDC09 .

Besides there is a Nokia N97 up for grabs too. So check it out!

Let’s revisit the factors that should be considered.

Idea

The company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the original idea, and that is certainly worth something, BUT there’s a lot of truth in the saying, “A successful business is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”

Business Plan Preparation

The development of an initial business plan is a surprisingly difficult and time-consuming effort. To pull together and organize all the thoughts of the founding team, filling in the blanks, identifying and reconciling the differences, and producing a document that captures the essence of the business and helps persuade banks, investors, board members, and others to support the company is a mammoth undertaking, as anyone who has done it will attest.

Again, the plan is a necessary element of starting the business, BUT execution against the plan is where the real value lies.

Domain Expertise

To what degree do you and your partners have meaningful experience in the business of your business? Knowing the industry, having relevant experience, and having a Rolodex full of accessible contacts can greatly improve the company’s probability of success and speed its growth rate. Otherwise, it will take longer to get commercial traction and you’ll have to pay for these assets, usually by hiring someone and including equity in their compensation package.

Commitment and Risk

You’ve probably heard the old saying that “a chicken is involved with breakfast, but a pig is committed.” Similarly, the founders who join the company full time and are committed to making it a success are much more valuable than founders who are going to sit on the sideline and be cheerleaders. In addition, the opportunity cost for those who join the company instead of pursuing a career is not trivial.

Responsibilities

Who is going to do what? Who is going to go stay up at night when you can’t make tomorrow’s payroll? Where does the “buck stop”?

Relative Importance of the Elements

For each company, the relative importance of these elements is likely to be very different than that for another company.  A company based upon new technology is highly dependent upon the “idea.”  On the other hand, a new restaurant is not likely to be so unique that the “idea” is a major contributor to the restaurant’s ultimate success. If we were to evaluate the ideas on a scale of 0-to-10, the technology company’s idea might be a 7 or 8,  while the restaurant may be only 2 or 3.

Similarly, the relative importance of the business plan will vary.  A company that has to raise external financing will need a plan that will assist fund raising efforts.  If the founders are providing the start up capital, then the plan will be relatively less important.

I believe the same analysis can be productively applied to the other elements.  Not only can the absolute evaluations be made (0-to-10), but they can be compared to one another for make sure that their relative values are reasonable as well.

Relative Contributions of the Founders

Each of the founders can be evaluated on these elements as well.  Who did what to come up with the idea? Who contributed what to the business plan? Who has the industry connections? Who is joining the company? Who is accepting responsibility for raising investment capital? Who is responsible for bringing the product to market?

An Example

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Assume that we have a high technology start up spinning out of a university with four members of the founding team.

1. The inventor who is recognized as the technology leader in his domain.
2. The “business guy” who is bringing business and industry knowledge to the company.
3. The technologist who has been the inventor’s “right hand man.”
4. The research team member who happened to be at the right place at the right time, but hasn’t and won’t contribute much to the technology or the company.

If these were all first-time entrepreneurs, it’s likely that they would each get 25% of the company’s stock, because “it’s fair.”

Let’s take a look at what the Founders’ Pie Calculator says. First we evaluate each of the factors on their relative importance and each of the founding team members contribution to each on a scale of 0-to-10.

Next, we multiply each of the founder’s values by the factor’s value to calculate weighted scores. Add up the numbers for each founder, sum those totals and determine the relative percentages. Do a sanity check to see if those numbers seem to make sense, and adjust them accordingly.

Advice to entrepreneurs

• Splitting up the founders’ pie is not a trivial undertaking.
• Rarely should it be split evenly, even though that’s what many start-ups do.
• Consider the past, current, and future relative contributions of the founding team members to the ultimate success of the company.
• Employ the Founders’ Pie Calculator to create a quantified scenario of how the pie might be divided based upon these elements.
• Caution: while I have convinced myself that this is brilliant tool, and that the scenarios that I’ve run through it have had logical outcomes, use this tool for guidance only.  Do not depend upon it exclusively.

Soruce: HERE

There’s no easy answer. And there is no rule book. You may be tempted to hand out a lot of your equity to hire the talent you need. But what if your start-up turns into the next Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), or the latest hot IPO, like VMware (NYSE: VMW)? Might you risk giving away the store?

Over the years, I’ve talked about equity splits with many pros. For example, last week I discussed the topic with Todd Dagres, a founder and general partner of Spark Capital.

Here’s the easy part: In the beginning, go for an equal split among the original founders. After all, in the early stages of a business, there is really not much value anyway.

Although, if a founder contributes hard cash, customers, partners, or technology, he or she deserves additional equity. But somehow there needs to be a way to value the contribution, which can be complex (except for cash) and may result in some heated exchanges.

It can also be complicated to decide who will be considered a founder. Include only those that will be critical for the success of the company in the first couple years. For all others, it’s probably a better idea to hire them or bring them on as consultants.

How then to treat early hires? It’s typical to set aside 5% to 10% of the company’s equity for employees. But it’s a good idea to have vesting. For example, you could set it up so an employee may vest 20% of the equity for each year with the company (for a term of five years). This can be helpful in attracting strong employees — and keeping them on board. Another benefit — if an employee leaves, there will be more equity available to give to new employees.

Now, let’s say you contribute technology, cash, or some other asset to the new venture. When you’re determining your equity stake, it’s also smart to provide a way to take back the asset in the event of a liquidation, dispute, or other problem. In the start-up world, the probability of survival is not good. So, make sure you don’t lose something that may still have value.

Finally, I highly recommend that you hire your own counsel. Many founders will hire an attorney to represent them as well as the company. While it may save some legal dollars, it could be expensive for your long-term financial interests.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Source: HERE

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function output($string)
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Take a look at your HTML now… much better.

Source: Here

Since I’ve started my new career as a venture capitalist I have become keenly aware of some of the classic mistakes that geeks make when trying to raise money for a new business. Instead of writing the same comments over and over again I thought I’d try to summarize some of the mistakes that people — especially smart people — make when they decide to try to turn their bright ideas into money. Here then is my top-ten list of geek business myths:

Myth #1: A brilliant idea will make you rich.

Reality: A brilliant idea is neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful business, although all else being equal it can’t hurt. Microsoft is probably the canonical example of a successful business, and it has never had a single brilliant idea in its entire history. (To the contrary, Microsoft has achieved success largely by seeking out and destroying other people’s brilliant ideas.) Google was based on a couple of brilliant ideas (Page rank, text-only ads, massive parallel implementation on cheap hardware) but none of those ideas were original with Larry or Sergey. This is not to say that Larry, Sergey and Bill are not bright guys — all three of them are sharper than I can ever hope to be. But the idea that any of them woke up one day with an inspiration and coasted the rest of the way to riches is a myth.

Myth #2: If you build it they will come.

There is a grain of truth to this myth. There have been examples of businesses that just built a product, cast it upon the ether(net), and achieved success. (Google is the canonical example.) But for every Google there are ten examples of companies that had killer products that didn’t sell for one reason or another. My favorite example of this is the first company I tried to start back in 1993. It was called FlowNet, and it was a new design for a high speed local area network. It ran at 500Mb/s in a time when 10 Mb/s ethernet was the norm. For more than five years, FlowNet had the best price/performance ratio of any available network. On top of that, FlowNet had built-in quality-of-service guarantees for streaming video. If FlowNet had taken over the world your streaming video would be working a lot better today than it does.

But despite the fact that on a technical level FlowNet blew everything else out of the water it was an abysmal failure as a business. We never sold a single unit. The full story of why FlowNet failed would take me far afield, but if I had to sum it up in a nutshell the reason it didn’t sell was very simple: it wasn’t Ethernet. And if we’d done our homework and market research we could have known that this would be, if not a show-stopper at least a significant obstacle. And we would have known it before we spent tens of thousands of dollars of our own money on patent attorneys and prototypes.

Myth #3: Someone will steal your idea if you don’t protect it.

Reality: No one gives a damn about your idea until you actually succeed and by then it’s too late. Even on the off chance that you do manage to stumble across someone who is as excited about your idea as you are, if they have any brains they will join you rather than try to beat you. (And if they don’t have any brains then it doesn’t matter what they do.)

Patent protection does serve one useful purpose: it can make investors feel warm and fuzzy, especially naive investors. But I strongly recommend that you do your own patent filings. It’s not hard to do once you learn how (get the Nolo Press book “Patent it Yourself”). You’ll do a better job than most patent attorneys and save yourself a lot of money.

Myth #4: What you think matters.

Reality: It matters not one whit that you and all your buddies think that your idea is the greatest thing since sliced pizza (unless, of course, your buddies are rich enough to be the customer base for your business). What matters is what your customers think. It is natural to assume that if you and your buddies think your idea is cool that millions of other people out there will think it’s cool too, and sometimes it works out that way, but usually not. The reason is that if you are smart enough to have a brilliant idea then you (and most likely your buddies) are different from everyone else. I don’t mean to sound condescending here, but the sad fact of the matter is that compared to you, most people are pretty dumb (look at how many people vote Republican and they care about dumb things. (I just heard about a new clothing store in Pasadena that has lines around the block. A clothing store!) If you cater only to people who care about the things that you care about then your customer base will be pretty small.

Myth #5: Financial models are bogus.

As with myth #2 there is a grain of truth here. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, prophecy is a lost art. There is no way to know for sure how much money your business is going to make, or how much it will cost to get to market. The reason for doing financial models is to do a reality check and convince yourself that making a return on investment is even a plausible possibility. If you run the numbers and find out that in order to reach break-even you need a customer base that is ten times larger than the currently known market for your product then you should probably rethink things. As Dwight Eisenhower said: plans are useless, but planning is indispensible.

This myth is the basis for one of the most classic mistakes that geeks make when pitching their ideas. They will say things like “Even if we only capture 1% of the market we’ll make big bucks.” Statements like that are a dead giveaway that you haven’t done your homework to find out what your customers actually want. You may as well say: there’s a good chance that only 1 customer in 100 will buy our product (and frankly, we’re not even sure about that). Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know.

Reality: You’ve been in denial about this your whole life. You were either brought up to believe that being smart mattered, or you just didn’t believe your mother when she told you that getting along with the other kids was more important than getting straight A’s.

The truth is, who you know matters more than what you know. This is not to say that being smart and knowledgable is useless. Knowing “what” is often an effective means of getting introduced to the right “whos”. But ultimately, the people you know and trust (and more importantly who trust you) matter more than the factual knowledge you may have at your immediate disposal. And there is a sound reason for this: business decisions are horrifically complicated. No one person can possibly amass all the knowledge and experience required to make a broad range of such decisions on their own, so effective business people delegate much of their decision-making to other people. And when they choose who to delegate to, their first pick is always people they know and trust.

Ironically, C programmers understand this much better than Lisp programmers. One of the ironies of the programming world is that using Lisp is vastly more productive than using pretty much any other programming language, but successful businesses based on Lisp are quite rare. The reason for this, I think, is that Lisp allows you to be so productive that a single person can get things done without having to work together with anyone else, and so Lisp programmers never develop the social skills needed to work effectively as a member of a team. A C programmer, by contrast, can’t do anything useful except as a member of a team. So although programming in C hobbles you in some ways, it forces you to form groups whose net effectiveness is greater than the sum of their parts, and who collectively can stomp on all the individual Lisp programmers out there, even though one-on-one a Lisper can run rings around a C programmer.

Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.

Reality: The only thing a Ph.D. means is that you’re not a moron, and you’re willing to put up with the bullshit it takes to slog your way through a Ph.D. program somewhere. Empirically, having a Ph.D. is negatively correlated with business success. This is because the reward structure in academia is almost the exact opposite of what it is in business. In academia, what your peers think matters. In business, it’s what your customers think that matters, and your customers are (almost certainly) not your peers.

[UPDATE: this is not to say that getting a Ph.D. is useless. You can learn a lot of useful stuff by getting a Ph.D. But it's the knowledge and experience that you gain by going through the process that is potentially valuable (for business endeavors), not the degree itself.]

Myth #8: I need $5 million to start my business

Reality: Unless you’re building hardware (in which case you should definitely rethink what you’re doing) you most likely don’t need any startup capital at all. Paul Graham has written extensively about this so I won’t belabor it too much, except to say this: you don’t need much startup capital, but what you do need is a willingness to work your buns off. You have to bring your brilliant idea to fruition yourself; no one else will do it for you, and no one will give you the money to hire someone to do it for you. The reason is very simple: if you don’t believe in the commercial potential of your idea enough to give up your evenings and weekends to own a bigger chunk of it, why should anyone else believe in it enough to put their hard-earned money at risk?

Myth #9: The idea is the most important part of my business plan.

Reality: The idea is very nearly irrelevant. What matters is 1) who are your customers? 2) Why will they buy what you’re selling? (Note that the reason for this could very well be something like, “Because I’m famous and I have a huge fan base and they will buy sacks of stale dog shit if it has my name on it.” But in your case it will more likely be, “Because we have a great product that blows the competition out of the water.”) 3) Who is on your team? and 4) What are the risks?

Myth #10: Having no competition is a good thing.

Reality: If you have no competition the most likely reason for that is that there’s no money to be made. There are six billion people on this planet, and it’s very unlikely that every last of them will have left a lucrative market niche completely unexploited.

The good news is that it is very likely that your competition sucks. The vast majority of businesses are not run very well. They make shoddy products. They treat their customers and their employees like shit. It’s not hard to find market opportunities where you can go in and kick the competition’s ass. You don’t want no competition, what you want is bad competition. And there’s plenty of that out there.

Special bonus myth (free with your paid subscription): After the IPO I’ll be happy.

If you don’t enjoy the process of starting a business then you will probably not succeed. It’s just too much work, and it will suck you dry if you’re not having fun doing it. Even if you get filthy stinking rich you will just have more time to look back across the years you wasted being miserable and nursing your acid reflux. The charm of expensive cars and whatnot wears off quickly. There’s only one kind of happiness that money can buy, and that is the opportunity to be on the other side of the table when some bright kid comes along with a brilliant idea for a business.

All these myths can be neatly summarized in a pithy slogan: it’s the customer, stupid. Success in business is not about having a brilliant idea. Bright ideas are a dime a dozen. Business is about taking a bright idea and assembling a team that can turn that idea into a product and bring that product to customers who want to buy it. It’s that simple. And that complicated.

Good luck.

Accounting and Finance

These free courses can give you some tips on managing money and making sound investments in your business.

1. Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting: This course is designed to help business owners make investment decisions, access managerial performance and place a value on other firms and businesses.
2. Financial Accounting: Through this short course, students will learn the basic concepts of corporate financial accounting and reporting to help make better finance-related decisions.
3. Management Accounting and Control: Learn how the finances of your business function through this course. You’ll get information about product costing, budget control systems, and performance evaluation so that you can plan and monitor the financial success of your business.
4. Introduction to the Art of Venture Valuation: This Columbia University seminar helps you learn how to value potential companies you’d like to invest in, especially those in the technology fields.
5. Mathematics of Finance: This mathematics of finance course is based on homework from Master’s level courses offered at Columbia University. You’ll get a chance to learn about elements of finance that include derivatives, futures, volatility, hedging and more.
6. Finance Theory II: Gain the financial tools and background needed to make good business decisions through this MIT course. You’ll learn the theory behind corporate finance and discover some ways that it can be applied to real-life situations.
7. Financial Management: This course focuses on the financial decisions that you’ll have to make as a manager. It will include information on the valuation of assets, risk management, risk and return, and corporate financing policies.
8. Real Estate Finance and Investment: Learn the basics of real estate finance and investment through this course. You’ll gain insight to the fundamental concepts behind what makes a good real estate investment and learn to apply it in everyday life.
9. Advanced Topics in Real Estate Finance: If you’ve already gotten the basics of real estate finance down and want to up your game in the field, check out this course offered by MIT. You’ll get information on the latest cutting-edge developments in real estate to help you keep up and stay informed.
10. Entrepreneurial Finance: For those building a new start-up, this course could be especially helpful as it focuses on the early stages of company development. You’ll learn about how to raise money, where to get money from, how to value your company and some basic organizational skills for finances.
11. Investments: If you want to learn about financial theory and empirical evidence for making investment decisions check out this course from MIT. Some of the topics touched upon will include portfolio theory, security prices, market efficiency, performance evaluation, and behavioral finance.
12. Early Stage Capital: This course focuses on elements of raising early stage capital and can be a big help to start-ups and young companies. You’ll gain some skills in making the most of advisors, negotiation relationships and finding great sources of funding.
13. Taxes and Business Strategy: If you manage your own business taxes, or just want to understand how they affect your bottom line, this course can be helpful. It attempts to combine education about the basics of business taxes and how they affect administrative issues.
14. Pricing: Improve your business’ pricing strategies and tactics with the information provided in this course. Topics will include pricing in competitive markets, estimating demand, price discrimination, the role of price cues, anticipating competitive responses, pricing in business to business markets, and pricing of new products.

Economics

Make sure you understand the larger factors that are at work in affecting your businesses profits and losses by educating yourself on economics through these classes.

1. Real Estate Economics: Whether you want to work directly in real estate or just need some information to help you make a better decision on purchasing office space, this course from MIT can provide instruction on real estate markets through a study of demographics, location, and government behavior.
2. Economics: Carnegie Mellon offers this introductory course in economics to help you learn the basics of issues like supply and demand, taxation, externalities and wages.
3. Applied Statistics: Through the materials offered in this free online course, you’ll deal with collecting and exploring data, basic inference, simple and multiple linear regression, analysis of variance, non-parametric methods, and statistical computing with all material geared towards practical applications in business.
4. Economic Analysis for Business Decisions: Check out this course to learn about the economic factors that influence making sound business decisions on a microeconomic level.
5. Applied Macro- and International Economics: Learn about big economic factors like GNP, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates and international trade in this wide-reaching course from MIT.
6. Applied Economics for Managers: This course focuses on microeconomics, and provides information on the integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy.
7. Political Economy I: Theories of the State and the Economy: Get a background in the social sciences for analyzing relations among state, economy, and society in this course. You’ll learn about historical theories of economics, and learn how social ideas have affected the financial market.
8. Global Climate Change: Economics, Science, and Policy: If you don’t think global warming will have an affect on your business, you may want to reconsider. This course examines some of the economic ramifications of climate change and proposed policy measures designed to slow its progress.
9. Global Entrepreneurship Lab: Why limit yourself to a national business when you could be working in the international market as well? This course addresses some of the challenges faced by international businesses and provides advice on working on a worldwide scale.

Communication

Getting ahead in business without good communication skills can be hard, so give yours a boost with help from these top-tier courses.

1. No Sweat Speaking: Check out this short online seminar from Columbia University to help you overcome your fear or nervousness about public speaking. You’ll get access to a series of videos that can offer you some tips and pointers on feeling at ease in front of a group of coworkers, clients or anyone else.
2. Architecture and Communication in Organizations: Think your office space or how its arranged has no effect on the performance of your business? This course may cause you to think differently, showing how workspace can influence the communication and organization of your business.
3. International Multilateral Negotiation: Take this course from Tufts to get some insight into how to negotiate with businesses from around the world to form new deals, open new markets or expand both of your businesses.
4. Management Communication for Undergraduates: If you feel you’re struggling with your communication skills, give this MIT course a try. You’ll build writing, speaking, teamwork, and interpersonal communication skills that can help you to be a more effective manager.
5. Advanced Managerial Communication: Once you’ve mastered some basic communication skills, then consider taking this course which builds on those skills to provide more in-depth instruction. You’ll learn how to deal with a hostile audience, run a meeting and converse successfully with clients.
6. Negotiation and Conflict Management: In any workplace there are bound to be conflicts that arise, but when they do will you know how to effectively resolve them? This course can help you to learn how to diffuse situations and come to resolutions that meet the needs of the parties involved.
7. Communication Skills for Academics: If your business is based in a particularly academic field, you may benefit from this course. You’ll learn skills that can translate not only in the academic world but to business, personal relationships and beyond.
8. Competitive Decision-Making and Negotiation: This MIT course is based on twelve negotiation exercises designed to simulate real life business experiences. It will cover topics like distributive bargaining, mixed-motive bargaining, auctions, fair division and more.
9. Power and Negotiation: Want to build your negotiation skills to the benefit of your business? This course may be able to offer some assistance. You’ll get insights into how to successfully work towards a deal within new and existing business relationships.
10. Listening to the Customer: Communication isn’t just about conveying ideas within your office but with your customers as well. This course will help you learn to better get feedback from your customers about your products and services so you can create more effective marketing plans and products.

Management

Management plays an essential role in keeping any business running smoothly. Ensure you and your employees are working to their full potential with some advice from these free courses from some of the best online schools.

Optimization Methods in Management Science: In this course, you’ll learn about the theory, algorithms, and applications of optimization to help you better control the logistics, manufacturing, transportation, marketing, project management, and financial issues of your business.
1. Operations Management: By taking this courses, you’ll learn about design, planning and control of manufacturing and service operations. This can include operation analysis, quality management, project management and supply chain management.
2. The Nuts and Bolt of Business Plans: Unclear how to put together a fool-proof business plan? This course can provide some guidance and make it easier to get your business ideas off the ground.
3. Strategic Management I: This course is designed to cover the emerging issues in strategic management including technology and global markets while providing a firm foundation in more traditional ideas as well.
4. Strategic Management II: For those who enjoyed the material from Strategic Management I, this course provides a means to expand those theoretical ideas into real-life business scenarios.
5. Managerial Psychology: Get into the heads of your coworkers and employees with this course. You’ll use behavioral science theories, methods, and tools to analyze situations that you may encounter in the workplace and understand them from a psychological viewpoint.
6. Game Theory for Managers: While it might sound like fun, this course is serious when it comes to business applications. It is designed to help students think strategically in complex, interactive environments with clients, customers and employees.
7. Communicating With Data: This course provides insight into ways that managers can use data of all kinds to make informed and sound business decisions.
8. Advanced Corporate Risk Management: With any business venture there is always an element of risk involved. This course focuses on businesses and how they can best manage issues like hedging, liability, risk, control and more.
9. Strategic Management and Consulting Proseminar: Theoretical Foundations: This course focuses on key issues to management like winning customer trust, business efficiency, shareholder value, globalization and motivating employees.
10. Seminar in Operations Management: Those interested in operations management will find this course of interest. It cover the purposes and development of Technology Roadmaps for showing “development paths for various technological domains and the industries that build on them.”
11. Management of Supply Networks for Products and Services: If you’re selling a product, a big part of doing so is making sure it gets out there on time and in one piece. This course provides some insight into how to manage these supply networks to ensure they stay up and running smoothly.
12. Theory of Operations Management: The focus of this operations management is on customer-driven businesses. You may be able to draw some pointers to use in your own business to create management operations that function similarly to these cutting-edge businesses.
13. Introduction to Operations Management: This is a relatively short course offered through MIT that discusses problems and analysis related to the design, planning, control, and improvement of manufacturing and service operations.
14. Strategic HR Management: The biggest asset of any business is the people that help run, organize and maintain its daily activities. This course can help you learn to more effectively manage your HR department and build a high-performance and satisfied group of employees.
15. System Dynamics Self Study: Through a series of readings and online exercises, students in this class will learn how to apply the basics of system dynamics to their workplace and business practices.
16. Sociology of Strategy: Check out this course to get a better understanding of the work sociologists are doing to understand strategy in businesses. This can shed some light on business performance, market interaction, competition and more.
17. Applications of System Dynamics: This course employs a hands-on method to system dynamics, allowing students to understand how they function in a real-world setting to make managerial and consulting decisions.
    1. Cross-Cultural Leadership: This course explores what constitutes effective leadership across cultures. It can be especially valuable for business owners who are working in a global environment.
    2. Leadership Tools and Teams: A Product Development Lab: If you’d like to explore your creative side, consider checking out this online course from MIT. It aims to have students develop tools that will help other students develop their leadership abilities.
    3. Practical Leadership: Want to get some insight into your leadership abilities? This course provides readings and the chance to evaluate your own leadership skills as you move through the material.
    4. Leadership Lab: This workshop is designed to help promote social responsibility and improve business success. Students will look at existing companies as examples and work through ideas and observations about what makes them successful.
    5. People and Organizations: Check out this MIT course to learn about the historical evolution and current state in which scientists, engineers and other professionals work. Managers can learn how to deal with negotiations, teamwork and leadership no matter what field they’re working within.
    6. Dynamic Leadership: Using Improvisation in Business: Want to be able to lead a business meeting off the cuff or come up with new ideas for working in teams on the spot? This course focuses on applying improvisation concepts in business situations.
    7. Literature, Ethics and Authority: In this course, you’ll use works of literature to explore ideas of ethics and authority and find ways that these can be applied to the workplace.
    8. Building and Leading Effective Teams: Managers and project leaders can benefit from this course to build leadership skills that will allow them to better help employees to work together effectively.
    9. Leading Organizations II: This course analyzes the human processes underlying organizational behavior and change from a psychological and sociological standpoint.
    10. Designing and Leading the Entrepreneurial Organization: Through the materials provided in this MIT course, students will learn how to build, organize and grow an organization.
    11. Individuals, Groups, and Organizations: Check out this course to learn the basic concepts for understanding individual, group, and organizational behavior and how individuals function within the workplace.
    12. Ethical Practice: Professionalism, Social Responsibility, and the Purpose of the Corporation: This MIT course allows students to explore theoretical concepts in business ethics as well apply these theories to real-life cases that represent the challenges they will likely face as managers
    1. Brand Leadership/E-Seminar 1, Brand Identity and Strategy: Professor Bernd Schmitt of Columbia Business School explains the steps businesses must take when marketing themselves to develop a successful brand identity in this online seminar, using real companies to illustrate his points.
    2. Brand Leadership/E-Seminar 2, Experiential Branding: Learn why it’s not enough to simply promote the features of your products in part two of this online seminar offered by Columbia University. You’ll gain insight into how to market the “experiences” of your products to increase the effectiveness of your selling.
    3. Brand Leadership/E-Seminar 3, Branding and the Creative Organization: Give this seminar a try to learn how to better organize your company to foster a creative environment that can help you to better build and maintain your brand. It’s the third and final part of the program offered by Columbia University.
    4. Introduction to Marketing: This basic marketing course covers the 5 C’s: Customer needs, Company skills, Competition, Collaborators, and Context.
    5. Special Seminar in Marketing: Marketing Management: Give this course a try to learn some key marketing terms and occurrences and to develop your skills in supporting and defending your argument for marketing decisions.
    6. Marketing Management: This course from MIT provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts of marketing which can include customer orientation, attention to competition and building core strengths.
    7. Strategic Marketing Measurement: What to know how to deal with the market when it comes to branding your products? This course is dedicated to helping business owners and students to learn how to develop market research surveys and develop the techniques needed to analyze them.
    8. Marketing Strategy: This course can help students to develop marketing strategies, evaluate a firm’s opportunities, anticipate competition, and evaluate the sustainability of competitive advantages.
    9. Entrepreneurial Marketing: Gain some new perspective on your business’ marketing from this course. You’ll be able to analyze to whom you are trying to sell products and the best ways to do so given your resources.
    10. Global Markets, National Policies, and the Competitive Advantages of Firms: Gain a global perspective on your business business by studying the interaction between environment and business around the world in today’s fast-changing economy.
    1. Managing the Innovation Process: Get a handle on the research and development going on in your business through this course which analyzes the process through through five levels: individual, team, network, organizational, and industrial.
    2. How to Develop “Breakthrough” Products and Services: In order to be successful, your business will need to develop unique and profitable products and services. This course can help you to use new ideas in innovation to more easily develop breakthrough products.
    3. Organizing for Innovative Product Development: Topics in this course include technology transfer, relations between science and technology, and the innovation process to help you learn to more effectively organize your process of development.
    4. Developmental Entrepreneurship: See both successful and failed businesses in this course to see what kind of new business products and models work and which may lead to financial issues.
    5. Data Mining: With technology making it easier than ever to collect data relevant to your business how can you get through it all and use it to make effective decisions? This course will help you learn how to store, manage and analyze data so you can make informed decisions about marketing and investment.
    6. Supply Chain Planning (SMA 6305): This course from MIT focuses on how to plan and integrate supply chain components into a coordinated system to ensure your products arrive when and where they are supposed to.
    1. Practical Information Technology Management: If you feel you don’t have the background to make sound business decisions about IT, give this course a try. You’ll gain insight into how to implement, maintain and manage these systems to the benefit of your business.
    2. Computer Science 162: UC Berkeley provides this computer science course which will cover some of the basics and give even those without the greatest knowledge of technology a good foundation for understanding the information systems keeping their business running.
    3. Integrating eSystems & Global Information Systems: This course will teach you how careful coordination of strategic applications, information technologies, and organizational structures can help you to build a successful IT foundation for your business.
    4. Information Technology Essentials: For those with little background in computer science this course can be a good introduction to issues in technology concepts and trends in using information management systems.
    5. Information Technology I: This course is designed to help students understand technical concepts underlying current and future developments in information technology.
    6. Information Technology as an Integrating Force in Manufacturing: Business leaders and owners without a knowledge of technology could be at quite a disadvantage as this class shows. Students will learn how to integrate information systems into their manufacturing process to make for more profitable and streamlined business practices.
    7. Generating Business Value from Information Technology: Learn how to make your IT investments more valuable to your business in the short and long term through the guidance of this MIT course.
    8. Technology Strategy: If you’re managing a high-tech business, this course can provide some helpful and interesting information on how to maintain a balance between innovation and demand.
    9. Systems Optimization: Models and Computation (SMA 5223): This course can be a big help to managers or engineers who are trying to make their businesses or designs more efficient. Students will learn how to use strategic models and apply them to real-life situations.
    10. Network Optimization: Make sure your business’ network is created in the right way with some help from this course. Students will learn about network flow issues that can affect everything from IT to project management.
    11. Queues: Theory and Applications: This course deals with the “modeling and analysis of queuing systems, with applications in communications, manufacturing, computers, call centers, service industries and transportation.”
    1. Law for the Entrepreneur and Manager: Through his course, you’ll gain a basic understanding of legal issues that corporations and businesses face when organizing, getting financing, protecting intellectual property, working internationally and more.
    2. Patents, Copyright and the Law of Intellectual Property: Protect your ideas with information from this course which discusses key concepts of U.S. intellectual property law, with emphasis on patents and copyrights and a briefer look at trade secrets and trademarks.
    3. The Law of Corporate Finance and Financial Markets: This course provides an introduction to the legal issues surrounding businesses, and covers topics like mergers, regulation, contracts, and liability.
    4. The Law of Mergers and Acquisitions: If you’re planning on making a merger or acquisition in the life of your company, you may find this course of interest. You’ll get walkthroughs of how both friendly mergers and unfriendly mergers can take place.
    5. Innovative Businesses and Breakthrough Technologies – The Legal Issues: This course covers the legal issues relating to breakthrough technologies, including R&D, the commercialization of new high-technology products, and the liability and regulatory implications of new products and business models to help you best protect the products and services developed by your business.
    1. System Optimization and Analysis for Manufacturing: No matter what it is you’re producing you want to make sure you’re doing so in the easiest and most cost efficient manner. This course from MIT provides some background on how you can optimize your manufacturing process for the best results.
    2. Principles of Industrial Hygiene: Johns Hopkins provides this course which helps those working in an industrial or manufacturing environment to understand how to maintain a clean and safe workplace environment for employees.
    3. Competition in Telecommunications: Through a series of readings in this MIT course, students will get insight into the economics, strategies and technology behind telecommunications companies to give them a better understanding of the intricacies of working in cable, internet or phone services.
    4. Principles and Practice of Drug Development: For those working on developing new pharmaceuticals and medical innovations, this course describes the process and provides information on the myriad of regulatory issues.
    5. The Software Business: If you have an interest in starting a software company, this course can be a good place to get some introductory information.

Leadership

These courses can help you be a better leader by teaching you important skills like working as a team, ethics, and how to work with a diverse group of people.

Marketing and Advertising

If you’ve got a product or service to sell, you need to get your name out there. These courses can give you some helpful ways to better market your business.

Product Development and Launch

These courses can give you some help on successfully developing new products and getting them out to your buyers.

Technology

No business can run without technology these days, so ensure you have a handle on the IT technologies it takes to keep your business in good shape through these courses.

Law

These college courses can help you make sure you know the legal rights and regulations that apply to your business.

Field Specific

These courses cover a range of more specific business topics.

RateElert.com, the internet’s leading online insurance exchange that assists consumers with finding the right policy at the lowest rate possible ,  comprised the Top 5 Warning Signs to look out for so you don’t get stuck with an insurance company who is bankrupt at the time you submit a claim.

Top 5 Warning Signs Your Insurance Company is in Financial Trouble:

1) You have trouble getting to speak with a  representative or placed on hold for more than 10 minutes when calling. Shows a decrease in staffing which could be a sign of not being able to keep up with payroll requirements.

2) Their AM Best Rating is downgraded to B++ or worse.  AM Best is a rating agency that evaluates the financial stability of insurance companies. You should always have your insurance with an “A “or better Rated Carrier.

3)  They increase your Rates by more than 40% .  This big of an increase shows a sign of lack of “Capital Reserves” on Hand which means your insurance carrier needs  to increase your premiums significantly in order to fund their reserves they need to have on hand to stay afloat.

4)  Late making your Claim Payments.  If  they take more that 60 days to settle your claim…watch out!  Your company  may not have the money coming in to pay your claim.

5)  Your Insurance Company asks the U.S Goverment for Bailout Money! If  they are behind AIG in line at the steps of the White House…Look Out!

What Happens if your insurance company fails?

You can be rest assured that your insurance policy is safe and your claims will be paid -within limits- even if your insurance company fails.

Many consumers may be questioning the safety of their insurance policies after the federal government announced an $85 billion bailout of AIG, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States.

AIG had not failed, but it does lack the cash on hand to pay out immediate claims.

With the help of the federal government, AIG will have the money to pays its immediate bills and customers insurance claims.  Experts say AIG’s  insurance policyholders are safe and that the company will not fail.  But if AIG can get into trouble, what about your insurance company?

Insurance companies do fail sometimes, but even when that happens, there are still safety nets the government has set up to protect you.

To help U.S consumers find out more on the financial stability of their insurance company, RateElert will e-mail you the A.M. Best Rating of your particular company after completing a 3-minute online form with information on your car insurance for FREE so you can feel safe and secure knowing you are with a finacially stable insurance company, and who knows you may qualify for a lower car insurance rate in the process!

*All the insurance companies in the RateElert Network are Rated “A” or better by AM Best. (a rating agency that measures the financial stability of insurance companies. If they are an “A” or better…they got the big bucks to pay your claims!)