Business Ideas Blog

Big companies used to have a monopoly on resources and tools that virtually held hostage to customers if they wanted a certain level or type of service. This is not so, and Phil Simon Little New: How a new breed of small businesses are harnessing the power of emerging technologies will show you exactly how small businesses like yours are playing and winning big by using tools and technologies used be out of reach of us.

Not normally initiate a review of a book talking about the author. But that's how I met the small New: Phil Simon contacted me and asked me if I could send a copy of his new book. After a while, I called and had a really excellent talk about the exciting technology that makes owning a small business nowadays very rewarding and exciting.

Phil made inquiries with businesses on how to optimize their use of technology. He is the author of two books: The next wave of technologies and why new systems fail. Phil is one of the most accessible writers out there, what I find most inspiring about Phil is his boundless energy and ability to reach every person you admire and want to learn. This tone is clearly in the book.

Phil told me he wanted this book to read like The Tipping Point. His intention was to gather information on trends and research supported by case studies of small business owners could be related to the use and your business.

Part I: Trends and five Facilitators: This section will provide a framework and an overview of the business landscape today. It will prepare you for the information meat to come and give perspective to what prompted the companies that is shaping up to use the strategies they did.

Part II: Little New: This is where you find lots of case studies provide real examples of how companies like yours adapted to trends. There are 12 short chapters that each delve into a critical business challenge and then show how a broad spectrum of companies overcame a challenge by using technology.

Part III: How to become one of the small New: If you are interested in using technology to build and grow your business, this section is priceless. Technology consultancy gives advice in a language and context make it easy for anyone to understand and apply.

Part IV: Looking to the Future: In this short section, Simon gives him the proverbial pat on the back and sends him on his way with some parting words of advice. The lesson I took away is that the adaptability and openness to technology and change are the best friends of the successful small business owner.

I normally do not go on and on about a book of technology. I mean, how can an interesting debate in the email, cloud computing and networks be? But when you see how Simon has been linked to marketing, sales management and finance, and then suddenly interested.

This is a book I'd recommend to owners of small businesses or anyone who has the decision-making power to evaluate, select and implement new technologies into a business. I would even stretch that recommendation to anyone who can make recommendations about which technologies will improve their business operations and productivity.

Earlier this year, I made a series of articles and seminars on how to make your small business and your marketing look like a larger company. There was much interest in this subject, and if you are someone who is established that the goal for himself this year, Little New information will, vision and inspiration you need to do that.

While the finding may be intuitively obvious (not the government), World Bank economists have recently shown that entrepreneurs create fewer new companies in countries with regulations that make companies more difficult game.

The reduction of regulation also improves the performance of small businesses. For example, researchers found that efforts to simplify the process of forming new businesses in Mexico increased use of small businesses by nearly 3 percent.

Why the regulation is a problem

Economists believe that regulation hurts small business in four ways. First, as Nicole and Mark Crain of Lafayette College to explain, regulatory compliance has a disproportionate burden on small businesses because the fixed costs of adhering to the rules can be spread over more money in big companies than in small. Crain and Crain estimated the cost per employee to comply with federal regulations at $ 10,585 for companies with fewer than 20 employees, but only $ 7,755 for businesses with more than 499 employees.

Second, government regulations, small businesses less competitive against foreign competition. As Crain and Crain explain government regulations create "inefficiencies in the structure of U.S. firms," damaging "the international competitiveness of domestic production of U.S. goods and services". " The relocation of production facilities to less regulated countries "and that leads to

Third, the addition of rules creates uncertainty, which keeps small business owners and hiring investment. Because some business owners can predict the scope or impact of new regulations that often delay the purchase of capital equipment or adding workers as they wait to see the impact of new regulation.

Fourth regulations, new often have unintended consequences. Consider the health care law, which requires companies to file 1099 forms for all individual payments to a beneficiary in excess of $ 600 per year from 2012. The effort to increase health insurance coverage has led to an unrelated tax imposed high compliance costs for small business owners, a result that surprised even many in Congress who voted to approve the law.

The United States does not compare well with many industrialized countries in the dimension of the regulation of small business. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that U.S. had higher regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship, greater administrative burden on small business owners and major obstacles to competition from a number of other industrialized countries.

The regulatory burden on small U.S. companies are worsening. Both the World Bank and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, U.S. that entrepreneurs face more red tape to launch in 2007 than in 2003.

U.S. small businesses are being adversely affected by two massive new laws: protecting the patient and affordable health care law and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection. A recent survey of the free card for small business owners indicated that almost half of small business owners believe the new health law is detrimental to their businesses and just over a quarter of what I see as beneficial . Responded to a 2010 Discover Card survey revealed that 55 percent of small business owners believe the financial reform project will finance small business more difficult, while only 9 percent thought that the new law make it easier.

Our leaders talk about reducing the regulatory burden on small businesses. In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, President Obama wrote: "Sometimes, these rules have gotten out of balance, imposing excessive burdens on businesses, the charges that have stifled innovation and have had a negative effect on growth and employment .... I am currently directing federal agencies to do more to take into account, and regulations, reduce the burden can be put on small businesses. "

Of course, some of us remember when President George W. Bush said in his 2004 State of the Union, "Our agenda for growth and employment should help small business owners and employees with relief from needless federal regulation ..."

Maybe I should stop quoting Presidents and start quoting country singers. As Toby Keith said that what we need is "a little less talk and a lot more action."