Finding New Business Ideas
Q: What opportunities do you see out there for new entrepreneurs? Where can someone turn for new business ideas?
—A.C., Florham Park, N.J.A: Ideas are everywhere. It's execution of good ideas -- not the ideas themselves -- that makes for successful businesses.
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That said, uncovering real opportunities and fleshing them out requires some foresight and research. Aspiring entrepreneurs should generally stick with industries or subjects they are already well-versed in, since they'll then be in the best position to spot opportunities and take advantage of them, says Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., entrepreneurial research organization.
"If you don't have a unique skill set in a space," he says, "it's going to be very hard for you to just jump in and compete with everyone else who does."
The best ideas, Mr. Fishback adds, are those that solve vexing problems -- and often spring from firsthand experiences. Of course, some trends, such as the aging baby-boomer population or the boom in online social networking, naturally present lots of opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Mr. Fishback recommends identifying the "smartest" people you can find in any industry you're considering starting a business in and speaking with them extensively about the industry and the issues they face. These people will not only feed you ideas, but can also act as a sounding board for any ideas you have. Closely monitoring the news, blogs and industry Web sites also can help sprout ideas.
The Internet offers plenty of resources as well. Social-networking sites for entrepreneurs, such as ClubENetwork.com, Vator.tv, Entrepreneur.Meetup.com and PartnerUp.com, allow people to swap business ideas and provide feedback to each other.
Other sites like ideablob.com, run by credit-card firm Advanta Corp., let users pitch business ideas and have their ideas voted on by other community members -- with the chance to win cash prizes.
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The General Failure of Incubators by Any Other Name (but for the insider MBAs who profit by beating a dead horse) & Bo Fishback’s “Conservatory for Schrammenomics”
April 28, 2009 by entrepreneurshipeconomist
Like Carl Schramm and Schrammeconomist statists, high-tech incubator MBAs generally ignore the exalted genius of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, who simply say that funds ought go first and foremost to innovators and entrepreneurs, and not to central-planning, risk-free, innovation-averse, uncreative bureaucrats who condescendingly see entrepreneurs and innovators as poor, helpless, timid souls who need incubation in their “benevolent” corproate-state incubators designed to transfer the technology from the timid, helpless entrepreneur for the greater good of all. All that the entreprnuer really needs is to get some of Kauffman’s funds while the MBAs get out of the way, but then where would the value of a Harvard MBA be in such a system? Kauffman wished for his funds to support entreprneurs and innovators, as Kuaffman knows that his vast fortune was not born in an incubator conceived by some innovationless MBA. Oh the irony–the MBAs greatest value is to never notice it, and to smile, smile, and smile as Tolstoy calls them out.
Bo Fishback will be hanging the following quote above the entrance to his incubator/conservatory: “I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.” –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence
The MBA incubator’s fundamental precept is that without him, the entrepreneur has no value. All too often this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as while the MBA is paid, the incubator fails to produce more wealth than was invested into it, save for that infamous moment in history whence worthless companies were taken public in ponzi schemes, or that other moment, whence worthless mortgages were sliced and diced and sold and gambled with, and that other infamous moment in history whnce the government rewarded all the gamblers and Harvard MBAs with massive taxpayer bailouts. The Harvard MBA excels at wealth destruction and wealth transfer, and some combination of the two are most generlaly manifested in their “incubators.” Sprinkle a little bit of indecipherable Schrammenomics on it, and one has a surfire way of enriching oneself from the funds of a dead entreprnuer’s foundations, while serving the spirit of entreprnuership in no discernable manner, but only opposing and eroding it.
The reason why entrepreneurship/technology incubator programs generally fail, besides lining the pockets of the risk-free “too cool to innovate or invent/too big to fail” founders with cash from foundations, is that they exalt the MBA/Bo Fishbacks over the innovators, entrepreneurs, and creators. To make a long story short, they fail because they try to privatize profits and socialize risk via the MBA bluff which the public/true entrepreneurs/innovators/inventors are growing tired of.
http://www.alternet.org/story/111376/?page=entire
“The multiple failures that beset the country, from our mismanaged economy to our shredded constitutional rights to our lack of universal health care to our imperial debacles in the Middle East, can be laid at the feet of our elite universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, along with most other elite schools, do a poor job educating students to think. They focus instead, through the filter of standardized tests, enrichment activities, advanced-placement classes, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools and blind deference to all authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers. The collapse of the country runs in a direct line from the manicured quadrangles and halls in places like Cambridge, Mass., Princeton, N.J., and New Haven, Conn., to the financial and political centers of power. ” –http://www.alternet.org/story/111376/?page=entire
Incubators are generally wealth-transfer mechanisms set up by innovationless MBAs to exalt themselves over the innovators and line their own personal pockets while also perpetuating the myth that innovators cannot succeed without them (a remarkably fallacious notion dispelled by google/Dell/Microsft/Starbcucks/Yahoo/Myspace/Facebook/Twitter/Apple/Ford/GM/AT&T/IBM/reality), as they maneuver themselves in-between innovators and the innovator’s natural place in the academy/institution, while simultaneoulsy undermining the innovator’s work, thusly bolstering their original, dire, and decpetive myth that innovators cannot succeed without their incubator. Two things are accomplished in setting up an incubator/conservatory–firstoff a permanent position is granted to the riskless MBA who can blame any shortcomings on the innovators’ inability to understand their supreme MBA wisdom (whcih has killed classic capitalism), and secondly, the MBA can leverage their position in undermining the innovators’ natural wealth creation while putting out PR releases that innovators and inventors are worthless without their incubators, while simultaneously lining their pockets with funds that the nobel Ewing Marion Kauffman had meant for entrepreneurs and innovators.
If Bo Fishback wants to witness a successful technology-transfer program, all he has to do is look towards Stanford, where the creators are left alone. MBAs do not set up incubators to siphon their money away. Acaemeics are respected, and thus mere grad students–such as the yahoo founders and google founders–are allowed to own and run their own companies. Never would schramm and his army of mbas/laywers amdit to/acknowledge this. Google’s first ten hires were not MBAs, but engineers–builders, creators, and innovators. google did not see the need to hire MBAs to try and take credit for all their innovative work while stifling their progress. And like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Virgin, Google is not lead by MBAs. An MBA tried to wring Apple from Jobs’ hands, and almost killed the company, before bringing him back.
The Bo Fishbacks create the myth that an entrepreneur is worthless without the MBA, and that the entrepreneur must come to Mommy’s incubator/womb because Mommy has an MBA, and sign over all of his/her innovations, inventions, and ideas while sitting in the incubator’s cubicle. The MBA announces to the world that he stands for welath creation and the greater good of society, and that the selfish entreprnuer is a useless heathen without their MBA “growthology” buzzwords. The MBA will then promise to pour his secret sauce on the innovations/inventions, and ideas, while letting them incubate. Sooner or later the innovator will realize that they are doing all the work anyway, so why are they giving up their equity? Then they will realize that no great company, such as Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, ever began in an incubator lined with swarmy MBAs and schrammeocnomists. When they try to leave, the incubator heads will send their schrammenomic lawyers forth to destroy the innovations and innovators, funded by an enormous Foundation which was never meant to fund MBAs and lawyers, but entrepreneurs, academics, and innovators; but which was somehow hijacked and transformed into a personal vanity press and ATM machine for loyal, sycophantic shrammeconomists.
There is a reason Schramm only hires fellow Schrammeconomists who never read the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek; for if they did (or if they noticed the success of Stanford’s hands-off approach and the epic track record of failed MBA incubators), they would not be able to launch centrally-planned incubators of their own. It takes a village to raise a child, we are told, and I guess it takes the village idiot to launch an incubator, for only the village idiot can exlat themselves above history, reality, and the innovator and inventor while actually believing the MBA incubator’s myth, even after it has been refuted in theory and practice and relaity ten thousand times over.
Hayek reminds us of the incubators’ fundamental fallacy–of its fundamentally flawed structure which is set up to provide the MBA a risk-free salaray and pension while also transferring the wealth of those “naughty, risky entrepeneurs” into the incubator’s pockets, should the entrepreneur be able to carry the incubator’s bureuacracy on his/her back and still somehow succeed. Hayek writes:
“Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but can be found everywhere among those who have embraced a collectivist faith (That a Schrammenomics/MBA/Incubator/Conservatory can create wealth). The worst oppression is condoned if it is committed in the name of socialism (growthology/schrammenomics/Fisbackian tyech-transfer conservatory). Intolerance of opposing ideas is openly extolled (Stangler et al are 100% loyal to Schrammenomics–Schramm exiles indpenent thinkers who quote Mises and Hayek); The tragedy of collectivist (growthology/Schrammenomics) thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason. There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem in Britain and America are precisely those on which Anglo-Saxons justly prided themselves and in which they were generally recognized to excel. These virtues were independence and self-reliance (not signing one’s innovations/inventions over to an incubator/team of MBAs), individual initiative and local responsibility (it takes a village of Schrammenomic bloggers to run growthology) , the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority (questioning the value of tech-transfer incubators, in light of the epic failures which are quickly swept under the rug, while incubator-free success such as MSFT and facebook and GOOG are ignored by the MBAs. changing the name from “incubator” to “conservatory” while letting the same arrogant, innovation-dismissing, invention-ignoring MBAs run them will likely not enhance the end product). Almost all the traditions and institutions which have molded the national character and the whole moral climate of England and America are those which the progress of collectivism and its centralistic tendencies are progressively destroying (look at the economy after seven years of schrammenomics. compare the list of companies born in fishbackian MBA conservatories/incubators to those born outside of them).”
What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do; but he judges the future in a different way. –Ludwig Von Mises
The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done. –LV Mises
And the incubator/conservatory profits to the extent that it refrains from funding entrepreneurs and innovators while perpetuating the myth that MBAs alone can save entreprneurs from failure, even though it was an MBA who almost killed Apple by firing the entrepreneur Steve Jobs, before Jobs was brought on back.
The MBA is generally not all that creative nor innovative, and as everyone has to make a living, their first instinct is to profit off the works of others, as we witnessed in this era of massive welath transfer which the MBA never criticizes.
http://www.alternet.org/story/111376/?page=entire “The Best and the Brightest Have Led America Off a Cliff”
Insetad, the MBA focuses on 1) ignoring innovators and entrepreneurs, 2) funeling foundation’s funds into their own pocket, and 3) setting up a conservatory/incubator which can fail forward for decades more, as the MBA blames the entrepreurs’and innovators for the incubators’ failures while pocketing a steady salary for ignoring the fact that the vast, vast majority of high-growth companies came from far, far beyond the incubator. So it is that Schrammenomics embraces the incubator, as it turns entrepreneurship on its head, exlating the MBA/Statist/economist over the innovator and creator, as the MBAs/schrammeconomists never fight against the burgeoning government and bailouts for their banker Harvard MBA friends, but only set up dog-and-pony show incubators which they think they can finally make work by calling them “conservatories,” while they simultaneously siphon the funds that Ewing Marion Kauffman had meant for tomorrow’s innovators and entrepreneurs, thusly augmenting their both their private nest eggs while further impeding innovators and inventors, and serving the myth that what is needed is more shcrammenomics and more MBA conservatories which guarantee innovationless economists/MBA/Statists secure positions while alos giving them the opportunity to privatize the profits of the risk takers, and socilaize the risk. This is the #1 talenty/occupation of the postmodern MBA/JD–the ability to use smoke and mirrors–to play the mere word games that transfer wealth into one’s owns pockets, while transferring risk to others–be it via the inflation tax or an “incubator/conservatory.” This would all be fine and great, but that for it is the exact opposite of entrepreneurship and actually profits via the destruction and erosion of the entrepreneurial spirit.
Ergo after seven years of Schrammenomics and Fishbackian tech incubators, which naturally must reallocate cpital menat for entreprneurs and innovators into fishback’s and schramm’s pockets, look at the economy. Millions of jobs and homes are being lost, as the Harvard MBA bankers make out in a vast manner, while the individual innovator and inventor is taxed, traduced, and ignored by the Schrammenomics juggernaut which prefers to buy itself George Eastman Kodak medals and speak to the rich bankers at the Milken institute, rather than focus on serving tomorror’s rich and today’s true innovators and entrepreneurs.
“Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow…” –Ludwig Von Mises talking about why Carm Schramm goes to the $ 3,995.00/head Milken Institute to address his fellow corporate-statists on Kauffman’s dime, instead of funding innovators, true academics, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and inventors who are losing their homes and businesses as the eocnomy withers after seven lonmg years of Schrammenomics and Schramm funnels himself and his growthology buzzword-bloggers millions from the Kauffman endowment (which was meant to go to entrepreneurs, true academics who are not afraid to quote Hayek and Mises, and innovators), while pretending to serve the innovators and entrepreneurs Schramm opposes in his characterless actions and by saying one thing while doing another.
“Profit is not related to or dependent on the amount of capital employed by the entrepreneur. Capital does not beget profit. Profit and loss are entirely determined by the success or failure of the entrepreneur to adjust production to the demand of the consumers.” –Ludwig Von Mises
Incubators generally turn the above on its head, trying to tell entrepreneurs that they need the incubator’s contacts and capital; even through it are the entreprneurs’ ideas which will have the true value.
Famous companies created outside of “tech incubators” nannied by condescending MBAs and “Bo Fishback” bureaucrats include, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Apple, Virgin, Yahoo, and Mark Ecko enterprises. Famous companies created inside the confines of Bo Fishbackian incurbators include the Schrammenomics vanity press once known as the Kauffman Foundation.
What the Harvard MBAs/economists/Statists always miss are two things–historical reality and sublime ecomomic theory. Blessed with a blindness to reality and a general aversion to reading, they press on with all the best intentions, reinstituting yesterday’s failed incubators with a slightly different twist, such as calling it a “conservatory.” Yes, just as students learn music and the art of performance in a conservatory such as Juliard, students will learn how to chant “growthology” and “shrammenomics” in unison in Bo’s Fishbackian conservatory which will be sure to create high-growth firms; as Microsoft, Facebook, and Mark Ecko enterprises were all created in incubators headed by Statist MBAs who primary concern was not innovation and inventing (as Kauffman conveniently refuses to fund inventors, entrepreneurs, academic economists quoting mMises and Hayek, and innovators) but lining their own private pockets with millions upon millions.
What the Statist/MBAs always miss are the contradictions between their own wealth-subtracting ambitions and the actual reality of how true entrepreneurship and innovation works.
“The only source from which an entrepreneurs profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.”
“Six years ago Burke was responsible for setting up CranfieldCreates, a business incubator modelled on the latest fashion in the private sector. Many other business schools were doing the same. ‘I was deeply involved in dot-com and was swept up in the euphoria like everyone else,’ he admits. The incubators lasted a couple of years. ‘Unless they were enormously heavily financed they couldn’t survive once the bubble burst. It was a typical technology wave; a bounce-back followed by a period of consolidation.’” –http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050512/ai_n14623642/
–http://mba.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=view_article&eiu_article_id=758101675
Pursuing your MBA
Why b-school incubators failed to hatch
08 Mar 2005
In response to the dot.com boom, business schools rapidly set up “incubators” to help their students create their own businesses and greatly increased their e-commerce and entrepreneurship courses. Five years on, is the emphasis still the same?
“Exactly five years ago, at the very peak of the dot.com stock-market boom, The Economist concluded a long analysis of the phenomenon with the admonition: “Don’t bet on this fairy tale having a happy ending”. As it turned out, this was prescient. Within weeks, the newspaper was reporting on April 14th 2000—“Black Friday”—when the technology-heavy US Nasdaq Index dropped to 3,321, over 34% lower than the record high reached on March 10th.
A great deal worse was to come. According to the Business Plan Archive, a US government-funded research initiative, 835 Internet businesses in the US went bust between January 2000 and April 2002.”
–http://mba.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=view_article&eiu_article_id=758101675
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Schrammenomics takes great pride in never reading Esintein in addition to compeletly ignoring F.A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, as by ignoring great minds and reality, they are able to line their pockets with others’ wealth and still sleep at night, while profiting by pretedning to serve the people and entrepreneurial spirit they oppose by their very actions.
Bo Fishback will be hanging the following quote above the entrance to his incubator/conservatory: “I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.” –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence
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