[TheVOICE] – Marketing, Business Books, Old People & Disruptors

A lot is going on in the world of startups, business owners and entrepreneurs. Here are some great articles you should read from the week of December 9, 2012.

CEO Blog Nation

1. Entrepreneurs Explain Future Marketing Trends [ANSWER] (Rescue a CEO) – Just as business as usual is no longer business as usual, marketing as usual is no longer marketing as usual. CEO Blog Nation and Rescue a CEO asked entrepreneurs and business owners what they believe is the future of marketing.
2. Successful Entrepreneur at 19, and Ready to Help Startups Across America (Hearpreneur) – Jeet Banerjee is living every young entrepreneur’s dream. Still a student at the age of 19, he has successfully sold one company and is working on two otherstartups that promise to be huge.
3. Why Did You Start Your Business? Week of December 2nd (Hearpreneur) – Entrepreneurs and business owners explain why they founded their business.
4. Business Owners Fellowship at Holiday Mixer in Springfield, Virginia (DMV CEO) – Last night 100 entrepreneurs and business owners from across the DMV attended the Annual Holiday Mixer presented by the Community Business Partnership (CBP) and co-sponsored by the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce.
5. Entrepreneurs Bookshelf: Books to Add to the Library [ANSWERS] (Teach a CEO) – With thousands and thousands of business books, it is difficult to read every single business book. So instead of wondering instead which book is worth reading and worth purchasing, we asked entrepreneurs what their favorite book is and why.

Across the Web

1. Microsoft launches a Pinterest-like social network (PR Daily) – Microsoft on Tuesday launched a brand-new social network Socl (pronounced “social”) that gives members a platform to create collages. The site, which began as an experiment in social search for students, has grown into a place “where people connect over shared interests expressed through beautiful post collages,” according to the Socl blog.
2. The year in content and marketing (PR Daily) – It’s time for all things year-in-review. So for those of us who work in content, what better time to take a look back at the year in … content?
3. Square Introduces Gift Cards: The Slow Death Of Physical Credit Cards And Cash Continues (Tech Crunch) – When you think about the process of getting someone a gift card, it’s kind of ridiculous. You go to a store, you take out your credit card, pay for it and then hand it to a friend. That’s the gist of it, and it’s a slow process. Today, payment service Square has introduced a new way to send gift cards, through its Square Wallet app. You can now go through all of the businesses that use Square to process payments, pick the right one for your friend or family member, and then purchase them a gift card of the amount of your choosing.
4. Don’t Go Postal (Small Business Trends) – Regardless of the legislation and regulations surrounding the U. S. Postal Service, there are business lessons we can learn from its experiences.
5. How to Make Innovation Less Risky (Forbes) – Corporations are clamoring for breakthrough innovation – but in this economic climate, who can afford multimillion-dollar wagers that might not pan out? Enter Peter Sims, co-author of the bestseller True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, with Bill George. “Companies have the wrong mindset,” he says. “They don’t experiment well, they bet big, and that’s often a sign they’re going to fail. We’re living in an age where every person needs to be much more creative and entrepreneurial. You have to be able to really get out there and be scrappy, create value, and the way to do it is through entrepreneurship.”
6. These Simple Business Lessons From ‘Casablanca' Could Save The American Economy (Business Insider) – One mistake many companies make is emphasizing short-term profit at the expense of long-term value.
7. The Perpetual Wealth System by John Jamieson (Entrepreneur Podcast Network) – John Jamieson the author of The Perpetual Wealth System which shows people and businesses how to make money by simply making monthly payments joins Enterprise Radio.
8. How to Manage a Business AND a Pregnancy (The Mogul Mom) – As excited as you are to be pregnant, the logistics of a pregnancy can be terrifying for entrepreneurs.
9. Old People (Ben's Blog) – Your startup is going well and as your business expands, you hear the dreaded words from someone on your board: “You need to hire some senior people.
10. Sober Advice for Startups From Cisco's Co-Founder (Bloomberg Businessweek) – She said many of today’s Internet companies don’t have unique technology and can be easily ripped off—as Lerner says happened to her in the makeup business, when competitors would imitate Urban Decay’s products in a matter of weeks.
11. Some Advice for Celebrities and Startups Seeking Their Endorsements – (Both Sides of the Table) – I live in LA. And I’m a VC. So you can imagine I see my fair share of celebrities looking to get into the technology industry. And equal numbers of startups seeking celebrity endorsements in exchange for equity. For the most part my advice is simple, “don’t bother.”
12. Social Media as the Next Web (Brian Solis) – Over the years social media has been the darling of marketers and would be experts. It’s not without good reason. Social media is exciting and transformative. It is something that we embrace as human beings and equally as professionals, we recognize its impact and opportunity. And, social media along with mobile represent the greatest growth areas for the Internet right now. But there’s more to it than hype.
13. The Future of Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Steve Blank) – Almost every large company understands it needs to build an organization that deals with the ever-increasing external forces of continuous disruption, the need for continuous innovation, globalization and regulation. But there is no standard strategy and structure for creating corporate innovation. We outline the strategy problem in this post and will propose some specific organizational suggestions in follow-on posts.
14. Founders Must Keep Their Startup Culture Positive (Startup Professionals Musing) – Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right.
15. For the Non-Profit CEO: Start Accepting Donations Electronically (Under 30 CEO) – Non-profits seeking an easy and efficient way to collect donations might want to consider setting up electronic or online options. The Internet is already used for everything from shopping and paying bills to communicating with loved ones, so why not use this great online tool for collecting electronic donations too, to save everyone time and money. Here are some of the many reasons why CEOs may want to consider accepting donations electronically at their non-profits.
16. How Gamification Can Take Your Business to the Next Level (Blogtrepreneur) – The workplace is no place for games, right? Not anymore. Gamification, an idea originally created as a way for brands to incentivize and encourage consumers to engage, has entered the enterprise level. As a younger generation, armed with their smartphones full of games and apps, enter the workforce, many employers are finding new ways to incentivize, train, and challenge their staff.
17.  Using LinkedIn Effectively (OPEN Forum) – LinkedIn is one of the top social media platforms for professionals, but most of us may not be maximizing the experience. Here are five ways to more effectively use LinkedIn.
18. Find the Next Disruptor Before it Finds You (Harvard Business Review Network) – An interview with Maxwell Wessel, fellow at the Forum for Growth and Innovation and coauthor of the article Surviving Disruption.
19. When everyone has access to the same tools (Seth Godin) – …then having a tool isn't much of an advantage. The industrial age, the age of scarcity, depended in part on the advantages that came with owning tools others didn't own.
20. 12 Effective Online Marketing Moves from 2012 (Social Media Today) – It works like this… I fumble my way through the year trying this and that and report back to you which efforts proved to be effective online marketing moves and then share them with you. I’m the lamb striving to help you become a lion in this digital jungle. Let’s do it.