This is a detailed empirical study of how small business owners finance their enterprises, which compares the experiences of women with those of men. The author redresses an over-reliance on subjective and anecdotal evidence of discrimination in this area with a controlled study of 40 matched pairs of male/female owners and their strategies for raising finances. The research reveals the importance of adopting a theoretical framework in which the role of gender in the financing of small businesses is considered and the practical implications for female entrepreneurs, banks and policy makers.

Is specifically for MedTech entrepreneurs Covers all major steps in the development of a new medical device and bringing it to the market Analyzes product roadmap, common pitfalls, and factors, which can increase chances for success Discusses in each chapter a particular aspect of the MedDev startup roadmap: regulatory, fundraising, business model, IP protection Is primarily based on the US market but is also illustrated with examples from Europe and Canada

This work contains papers reporting on the structure, utilization and analytic concerns arising from the use of the major datasets in small business and entrepreneurship research including: the National Federation of Independent Businesses surveys; US Small Business Administration datasets; the General Social Survey; the US Current Population Surveys; the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; and, many others from around the world.

"Well written and logically organized." --Booklist. This handbook makes planning and problem-solving easy with its clear explanations of complex issues. In The Law (in Plain English)(R) for Small Business, Sixth Edition, Leonard DuBoff guides entrepreneurs and small business owners through the maze of legal obligations and protections they need to understand. Chapters cover important topics such as: Licenses Trademarks Insurance plans Franchising Incorporating Advertising eBusiness considerations Taxes Succession planning Whether one is just about to open a small business, reassessing an existing business, or simply have a few questions, The Law (in Plain English)(R) for Small Business, Sixth Edition, is the go-to resource for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Good conversation is at the heart of networking, meetings, interviews, negotiations and raising your profile. It can ease your way in work, enabling you to build alliances, create strong relationships with staff, bosses and clients, succeed at interviews, motivate and inspire. But conversation is something most of us were never taught! We learn to speak as babies, but how conversation actually works is something most of us pick up only haphazardly, and many have yet to learn. Why is it some of us are stuck for words, but others blabber or can t stop? What is it that some people have naturally which enables them to converse comfortably and easily, to engage people and build better relationships? The Art of Conversation will show you step by step how to converse skillfully and enjoyably with other people, at home, at work, on the phone and in the street- even if you re daunted now, discover the difference good conversation can make in every aspect of your life. Learn to: -Overcome the most common block to good conversation- fear; find out how to break the silence and keep the conversation going - Understand the different types of conversation and how they work- which topics and language are suitable for the occasion - Learn simple methods for being heard and understood, including speaking clearly and audibly, listening well and using non-verbal communication - Find out how to hold a conversation in tricky situations, including how to disagree, how to speak to those in authority and people you find difficult -Use conversation to form relationships, improve friendships, make the sale, chat people up, to learn, influence and persuade.

A practical guide to best and worst practices for family businesses--from drawing up incorporation documents to succession planning to selling the business. The book also includes examples from actual court cases and presents these lessons in an accessible manner. Sample legal agreements are included which help to avoid some of the major risks to the family business.

Book & CD-ROM. If you enjoy working outdoors and want to incorporate your creativity into your work, operating a small nursery, landscaping, or lawn service may be the perfect business for you. In fact, many operators combine all three of these elements to make an ideal year-round business. This is an ideal home-based business and can be started with just a few thousand pounds. This guide provides readers with an understanding of the basic concepts of starting their own service business. The book offers a comprehensive and detailed study of the business side of the nursery and landscape business. You will learn everything from the initial start-up decisions to working with clients. If you are investigating opportunities in this type of business, you should begin by reading this book. If you enjoy working with people and working outdoors, this may be the perfect business for you. Keep in mind that this business looks easy but, as with any business, looks can be deceiving. This complete manual will arm you with everything you need, including sample business forms; contracts; worksheets and checklists for planning, opening, and running day-to-day operations; setting up your office; plans and layouts; and dozens of other valuable, timesaving tools of the trade that no business should be without. While providing detailed instruction and examples, the author leads you through every detail that will bring success. You will learn how to draw up a winning business plan (the companion CD-ROM has the actual business plan you can use in Microsoft Word) and about choosing a name, equipment, equipment maintenance, selling your other services to your present customers, how to attract and bid on residential and commercial accounts, contracts and billing procedures, advertising, insurance, legal matters, basic cost control systems, market research, getting new clients, tax laws, pricing, leads, sales and marketing techniques, and pricing formulas. You will learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money, how to hire and keep a qualified professional staff, how to manage and train employees, how to generate high profile public relations and publicity, and how to implement low cost internal marketing ideas. You will learn how to build your business by using low and no cost ways to satisfy customers, as well as ways to increase sales and have customers refer others to you. You will learn about basic accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting, and profit planning development, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. This manual delivers innovative ways to streamline your business. Learn new ways to make your operation run smoother and increase performance. Successful entrepreneurs will appreciate this valuable resource and reference it in their daily activities as a source of ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can easily be applied to their operations. The companion CD-ROM contains all the forms found in the book, as well as a sample business plan you can adapt for your own use.

This book focuses on the relationship between business strategy and competition among Italian SMEs in the aftermath of the economic crisis. First examining business strategy and competitive advantage in a broader sense, Business Strategies and Competitiveness in Times of Crisis goes on to analyse the strategic behaviour of SMEs and the key factors that allow them to overcome the challenges they face. The book covers wide-ranging topics such as marketing and communication strategies, internationalization process and entry modes, access to credit, networking, innovation process and human resources enhancement. Referring to insightful case studies and surveys conducted between 2011 and 2014, it reflects on managerial implications for Italian SMEs and identifies their three main competitive challenges.

The small business is an often underestimated asset of both the modern economy and the commercial workforce. Those employed by small businesses make up a large percentage of both the U.S. and Canadian populations, and with the internet and other technologies connecting us like never before, the opportunity is present for even the smallest company to reach a global scale. Strategic Utilization of Information Systems in Small Business explores the possibilities not just in expanding a business, but in assisting a business in meeting its full potential, no matter its size. Including a variety of perspectives on what it means to be a small business and how to bring that business to maturity, this book is an essential reference source for small business owners, managers, and employees, as well as students, researchers, and aspiring entrepreneurs. This publication features chapters on the different aspects of management processes, e-commerce, and e-businesses, including the characteristics of a smart entrepreneur, success vs. failure, longevity, technology adoption, the types of different information systems and how to implement them, data and decision making, theories for investigating small businesses, business strategy, and competitive advantage.

Tree farm business management for small private landowners (those who own about 40 to 4,000 acres). This practical guide to making money in small-scale forestry is written by the major seller of open market timber in the South, who is also publisher of a quarterly newsletter which is the most widely read publication in the business. In this new edition of Tree Farm Business Management, forester Vardaman covers the basics of the business and discusses costs of management and operations, accounting procedures, tax and legal considerations, selling timber, and the role of the big timber companies. Includes case studies of successful timberland investors.

The book aims to collect the most recent research and best practices in the cooperative and networking small business field identifying new theoretical models and describing the relationship between cooperation and networks in the small business strategy context. It examines different concepts and analytical techniques better understand the links between cooperative strategies and networks in small business. It also studies the existing economic conditions of network and strategic implications to small business from the point of view of their internal and external consistency. Cooperation and networks is a fashionable topic. It is receiving increasing attention in popular management publications, as well as specialized academic journals. Cooperation between firms and industries is a means of leveraging and aggregating knowledge also generating direct benefits in terms of innovation, productivity and competitiveness. Various options and decisions made within the framework of strategic alliances may be identified and differentiated. For example, it has been argued that R&D cooperation between competing firms also facilitates the search for incremental efficiency gains and is thus a competitive advantage. In parallel with a theoretical acceptance of the importance of a sustained competitive advantage to formulate strategy, there is a growing understanding that cooperative and networking behavior among small firms is at the root of many success stories in today's small business management. This condition requires an effort to develop a study of both aspects of cooperation and networks as compatible, complementary facets of a unique reality. In short, the cooperative and networking relationships of a small business can be the source of its competitive advantage. Enhancement of local resources and capabilities for the generation and dissemination of knowledge is still an issue for defining public policies in many countries.Featuring contributions covering such topics as green innovation, social commerce, university cooperation networks, and regional entrepreneurship, this book provides a comprehensive and richly illustrated study of cooperation and networks in small business that will be pertinent to students, academics, professionals, scholars, and policy makers.

Reviews the evolution and theory of Sustainability Footprints e.g. carbon footprint and examines the critical success factors and contributions to small to medium sized enterprises (SME) growth Assist firms in achieving sustainable growth in four key areas Innovation Impact, Cost Impact, Environmental Impact, and Stakeholder Impact Identifies the challenges and Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in the use of sustainability footprint methodology within small businesses by the use of case studies Proposes a strategic model suitable for the deployment of sustainability strategy and initiatives within business

This business book is great for leaders, middle managers and entrepreneurs interested in the following categories:

• Small Business
• Entrepreneurship
• Marketing
• Strategy
• Branding
• Customer Experience

Make it easy for customers to choose you; whatever your business, product or service.

With customers now subconsciously weighing up their massively expanded options in terms of purchase friction (how easy it is to spend) and shopping reward (the extras inherent to the buying experience); your job is to make it easy for them to choose you

When is high friction bad? Friction includes frustrations like putting a coin in a supermarket trolley lock, too many clicks, and hidden frictions from awkward presentation, process and offer. Reward includes quality of business support, amazing retail environments, even emotional issues such as trust and belonging.

When is high friction good? What value do different customers place on friction and reward across different buying scenarios? How can I benchmark against competitors? And, where are the big opportunities and where should we focus effort and resource? How do I market improved experiences to win customers?

Friction Reward teaches you how to understand, measure and improve every single possible customer interaction by applying techniques outlined in the book to your customer experiences and organisations.

Readers will:

• Create easier, faster and improved customer experiences by reducing friction and increasing reward.
• Discover how reducing friction attracts new customers, increases spend from existing ones and gives you a competitive advantage.
• Understand how the world's leading retailers, B2B sellers and public service providers are winning using these insights.
• Learn how to apply practical tools and technologies to their own customer and user scenarios both online and in the physical world.

Increased interest in handicrafts has led to more people becoming artisans both as a hobby and a business activity, making Artisan Entrepreneurship a growing phenomenon. This has been particularly relevant during the COVID-19 crisis in which individuals and communities began engaging with more bespoke crafting at home. This book focuses on these practices from different perspectives including the art, cultural and social sectors, thereby highlighting the emerging new types of artisan activity that preserve cultural elements while incorporating emerging technologies like social media. This volume analyses artisan entrepreneurship using different approaches including at an individual, group and societal point of view providing a better understanding about how these handicraft workers contribute to societal wellbeing and aid cultural heritage preservation for future generations. Each chapter of this book looks at these practices in a different way, enabling the practical and theoretical significance of artisan entrepreneurship to emerge and presenting a holistic understanding of artisan entrepreneurship in different contextual settings. Artisan Entrepreneurship provides a unique way in which to understand an important type of enterprise that has been neglected but recently had a resurgence. This book provides a fundamental contribution to the field of artisan entrepreneurship.

This volume represents a comprehensive state-of-the-art picture of family business and entrepreneurship issues in countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council. It provides major theoretical and empirical evidence which depicts the current processes in each GCC country including problems, faced by family business owners and entrepreneurs, such as succession, financial constraints, and conflicts. The chapters offer recommendations to policy makers on how to improve the general business environment and encourage potential investors, researchers, academicians, and professionals to be more involved in the region. The book is an outcome of a long-lasting endeavor and includes contributions from highly reputed authors and experts from the region and abroad.

Tried-and-true advice, tools, and strategies to start and succeed in a small business With more Canadians yearning to start a small business--along with benefitting tax rate incentives and interesting new business opportunities--there's never been a greater need for a detailed, comprehensive guide to operating a small business. Comprising the most pertinent information from several bestselling For Dummies books on the subject, this all-encompassing guide gives you everything you need to know about successfully running a small business. Define your target market Create the perfect business plan Get to the bottom of financials Build a strong online presence and social media following From soup to nuts, this book is your recipe for small business success.

The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook has already created enormous improvements for millions of people and will help you turn your greatest goals into reality. With The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook, your business can make more progress in one year than it would normally make in several decades. You receive step-by-step help to accomplish 20 times your usual results with the same time and effort, or to enjoy the same results with 1/20th the time and effort: That's the promise of The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook. This workbook was created to make the lessons of the highly acclaimed Amazon.com best seller, The 2,000 Percent Solution, come to life for more people. Since the first printing of The 2,000 Percent Solution in 1999, organizations all over the world have made The 2,000 Percent Solution a daily resource for overcoming the dual challenges of tough competitors and a difficult business environment. Designed to be used after reading The 2,000 Percent Solution, this workbook has previously been available only to clients of Mitchell and Company, the global consulting firm, and students of the authors. Here's your chance to learn from their successful experiences with this remark