MATR Newsletter - Fri Jun 10, 2005 |
"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate." -- Thornton Wilder
Come Home Montana
Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana
- Featured "Come Home Montana" Community~LIBERTY COUNTY
- Montana-Jobs.net Featured Career ~ High School Science Teacher
- Montana-Jobs.net Featured Talent - Executive Manager
Education
- Entrepreneurs' Organization Launches as World's Premier Learning Community for Entrepreneurs
"Our goal is not to change who we are but to magnify the best of what we are today and create a platform to increase our reach, influence and value to members moving forward."
- Pioneer Entrepreneurs® Dispatches from the Frontier . No. 27
Welcome to Dispatches from the Frontier - perspectives on the Pioneer Entrepreneurs® who are transforming the opportunity landscape. Through our Dispatches, we'll periodically share our observations regarding people, places, business models, ideas, and trends.
- Conference focuses on experience, challenges of being an entrepreneur
"Being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience," Still said. "It's reassuring to hear the stories of those who came before and survived and even prospered."
- Capital DECA students place fifth in national competition
DECA is an international association of marketing students with 185,000 members across the United States and in Canada, Germany and the U.S. territories.
Montana Business
- Harvard Business dean, Kim B. Clark to become President of Brigham Young University-Idaho.
Harvard Business School dean Kim B. Clark, who over the past decade has focused the school on ethics, technology, global commerce, and entrepreneurship, yesterday said he will resign on July 31 to become the president of Brigham Young University-Idaho.
Montana Economic Development
- Owens & Hurst ends mill operations; workers ponder options
There it rested, in the vast emptiness of a mulch-covered log yard, with blue spray paint marking its significance for Eureka's Owens & Hurst lumber mill: "last log."
- Pasta Montana adds lasagna, buys Los Angeles company
"Costa Pasta will operate as a division of Pasta Montana," he said. "All of our products will be made in Great Falls."
- Spokane Better Business Bureau now serving Montana
The idea is to build Montana membership and make the organization a first resort for Montana consumers who have grievances with businesses.
GIS Technology
- Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce encourages members to run for City Council
“This is the single most important business involvement request this Chamber will make.” Kim Latrielle
- Montana Ag Innovation Center awards 11 innovation grants
The Montana Agricultural Innovation Center and its five Regional Economic Development Centers work to commercialize ideas that come from agricultural producers.
- Speaker inspires Montana farmers to expand - Innovate or die
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there," Will Rogers
Funding and Building your Business
- Geeks take mapping service in new directions
As it turns out, Google charts each point on its maps by latitude and longitude — that's how Google can produce driving directions to practically anywhere in the nation. Seasoned developers have figured out how to match these points with locations from outside databases that can contain vast amounts of information — anything from police blotters to real-estate listings.
- GPS Navigating Concept Aids Manufacturing Process
"We help automate things that they didn't think were able to be automated in the past,"
Regional Business
- Business Technology: Build Your Company's Receptor Capacity
"Universities today are leading industry, not the other way around," Lazaridis said. And that's precisely how it should be. "Industry needs to build up our receptor capacity to understand the research that top university students are doing today. Often we don't understand it, and we somehow make that the students' problem. But maybe the reason we don't understand it is that we just don't understand it. And these students are decades ahead of us, and it's not their problem that we don't understand what they're telling us."
- 5 Steps for Turning Your Idea Into a Product
Most inventions take years to come to fruition. Have patience and follow due diligence in your steps to patenting your invention and your years of hard work will finally pay off.
- The Fine Art of Meeting With an Angel Investor
The goal of your meeting with the angel should be to reach a verbal agreement to invest.
- Michael Moritz on Sociopathic Entrepreneurs
There was another co-founder who on a Sunday afternoon at a startup in Santa Clara tried to kill his co-founder by driving a pickup truck through the plate glass window. We are often wrong about our assessments and judgments about people."
- Employee Development Still Informal in Most Companies
Most professionals relied on these generic programs instead of formal learning programs like career mentoring, high-visibility assignments and succession planning, which focus on the individual, according to the survey.
- Angel Investors Overvalue Start-ups, Say Venture Capitalists
The survey, given to both venture capitalists and angel investors, found that even though 94% of venture capital respondents recognize the importance of angel investors in early stage financing, 58% said that angel involvement "sometimes" or "mostly" made a company unattractive.
- Working On Your Business Versus Working In Your Business
Understanding the relationship between yourself and the direction of your company can help you develop an effective road map to running your business.
- The best and the rest: rating Web developers
"It's an important factor. If you want someone who can contribute to your vision and direction, then you need someone who really believes in what they are doing and who know the landscape,"
- Four steps to making talent management a core competence
While organizations have perfected sophisticated techniques for managing capital investments, suppliers and the production and flow of goods and services, their capabilities in managing people seriously lag.
- Venture Capital Rediscovers the Consumer Internet
Every other venture capitalist one encounters in Silicon Valley now seems eager to reinvent himself as an expert who can spot hot new consumer-driven Internet ventures.
Regional Economic Development
- Qwest preps for walkout - Managers warned they may have to assume jobs if pact not reached
The contract with the Communications Workers of America District 7, which has about 25,000 members employed by Qwest, expires at midnight Aug. 13. Talks are scheduled to begin June 22.
Utah Business
- India faces outsourcing labor shortage
``The problem is not with the quantity, but with the quality,''
- Trying to sell Spokane amid the scandal
What would be the first impression that would come to mind -- the advisory's message that Spokane is a happening place with a vibrant tech economy? Or would it be ... you know, that "other" story?
- Regional Economies as Knowledge Laboratories
Thought I'd pass along this flyer for a book from a colleague of mine in Italy. I was impressed when I was in Italy last May with their sophisticated approach to economic development with an emphasis on knowledge-based industries.
- Knowledge Economy Growing in Rural Areas
Rural areas are increasingly developing strategies for building a knowledge economy, according to a recent issue of the Main Street Economist.
Utah Economic Development
- Venture Accelerator Club founded in Cache Valley, UT
The club will consider proposals for technology-based businesses emanating from USU and other regional universities, as well as those from the general public in northern Utah.
Washington Business
- Utahns urged to help lure businesses - Gov. wants to target specific cluster development
Technology can be supported by backing the state's identification of economic "clusters," or types of industries where Utah has demonstrated world-class expertise. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. wants business recruitment and existing business development targeted in these groups and wants to develop cooperation among competing companies in the individual clusters.
Other Economies
- State of Washington Launches Innovative Business Recruitment Web Site
"In this day and age, when more than 80 percent of the initial site selection screening is done through the Internet, it was critical that we develop a user-friendly site that provides quality information all at one easy-to-access location," said Juli Wilkerson, director of the Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.
University Business Plan Competitions
- If You Can Make It in Silicon Valley, You Can Make It . . . in Silicon Valley Again
The miracle of Silicon Valley is that it is a system finely calibrated to spit out new companies -- some of which have come to be worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, within a few years' time.
- “Fifty Companies to Watch”
growing second-stage enterprises work mostly "behind the scenes," even though they generate the bulk of new, sustainable jobs and are a powerful economic force underpinning the high quality of life most Americans enjoy.
Incubators and R&D
- Alzheimer's drug firm and more winners named in Wisconsin business-plan contest
The award was granted at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Conference in Milwaukee. For Mithridion, it includes a $20,000 cash prize and a year's free rent in 2,700 square feet of space, including labs, at the University Research Park in Madison, valued at $80,000.
The Creative and Cultural Economy
- Idaho National Laboratory Receives Second Round of Homeland Security Funding for Cyber Threat Reduction Program
"The work for which they are using this funding is making real progress towards securing America's control systems."
- University of Montana Research View - Winter 2005
"The Siberian Connection: Was Montana Once Attached to Russia?" and several other intriguing stories in this excellent edition. Great reading.
Careers
- Clay People - The Archie Bray Foundation welcomes new group of artists
Along with Pavelka, the Bray is welcoming 11 other summer residents from places like Korea, Canada, Sweden and various cities throughout the U.S. Out of roughly 140 applicants, the Bray chose only 21 artists to fill both short- and long-term residencies.
Energy
- A Memorable Cover Letter Will Boost Your Chances
"It helps to have a hook," says Mr. Lorelli. "Something creative and relevant that captures the reader's attention."
Connectivity & Communications
- Biodiesel: A New Way of Turning Plants into Fuel
"The biggest advance we have to offer is the lack of that distillation process,"
- Adding value to energy
Wyoming exports more energy in raw mineral form than any other state in the nation.
Transportation
- Hooked-up Seattle tops national 'unwired' list
"Being in Seattle, I was guessing that if I found a Starbucks, I would find a hotspot," Buehrle said. "It is hilarious how many Starbucks there are here."
- Cable company, KLiP Interactive vows top-quality rural service in Montana, Wyoming
Future products include digital cable, video-on-demand, digital video recorders and high-definition television as well as high-speed Internet and local and long distance phone service.
Leadership Montana
- Big Sky Airlines to Begin New Service Between Bozeman and Boise, Idaho for $125 and adds a second flight between Missoula and Boise
Big Sky will offer one daily non-stop flight in each direction between Bozeman and Boise.
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- Employees View Leadership Through Lens of Work-Life Balance
According to the study, employees who strike a positive balance between home and work were 11% more likely to praise their leaders' ability to set clear direction than those who have trouble finding such a balance.
- Researcher sees future where people walk at work
A recently published study he led showed that thin people are on their feet an average of 152 more minutes a day than couch potatoes. Levine was brainstorming ways to address that 2½-hour NEAT deficit a few months ago when he had the idea for the "ultimate office makeover."
- Honey, I Shrunk the PC - breakthrough that might one day lead to high-powered computers the size of a postage stamp
Together, the two studies could bring the final frontier in nanocomputing -- a single-molecule transistor -- considerably closer to reality.
- Roadcasting: A Potential Mesh Network Killer App
the software enables users to create their own personal radio stations
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