We have assembled below a number of website links, video clips and other materials that we have found over recent years to be well worth a look. These include news magazine style sites, government information portals and corporate sites that offer useful self-help for small businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators seeking to commercialize new product technologies. We will update these from time to time and feature them via our home page and the CEMI LinkedIn group site.
Videos
Here is a selection of videos relating to entrepreneurship, innovation and small business management that you may find interesting.
The Elevator Pitch
The CBC's business reality series, Dragons' Den, is where contestants pitch their business ideas to 5 multimillionaire investors in an effort to acquire the funding they need to make their business come to life. The way to suceed is to master the "elevator pitch." Mentor Capitalist, Sean wise explains how.
What is an entrepreneur?
Entrepreneur Week panelists reflect on what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity full TED talk
http://www.ted.com Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
Ken Robinson - How schools kill creativity
This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.
Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from
One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.
Intuit drives success through entrepreneurship
Scott Cook is co-founder of Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks, Quicken, and TurboTax. He now serves as the chairman of Intuit's Executive Committee, and is a mentor to entrepreneurs at the company. In this video, we sit down to discuss the making of great corporate leaders. Cook says that for any company to continue to flourish and thrive, it can't rely on its first product, its first customers, its first employees. Continual entrepreneurship is necessary to reengineer success. "Entrepreneurship isn't easy," says Cook. "But the internet, mobile phones, and app stores now enable far more entrepreneurship at a far more rapid scale, so more ideas can be tried, winnowed, iterated, and win. It's a thrilling time."
Cook is also focused on entrepreneurship in the developing world. Intuit has become active in India, creating an entrepreneurial center to hire, train, and develop Intuit employees there, with the hope they will become the entrepreneurs who invent new businesses for the developing world. That's why Cook carries around a bare-bones mobile phone, in addition to his smartphone: it's the phone most of the world uses. Right now it's just a phone, and you can't get information on it—but Cook's working on changing that. "It will either be a big hit or a total bust. This could change life for 4 billion people."
Secrets of successful "intrapreneurship"?
Entrepreneurship and innovation have never been more important. Even in large corporations, entrepreneurial thinking isn't optional -- those who stand still fall behind. That's why fostering intrapreneurship, or entrepreneurial thinking within an established organization, is a competitive advantage. Watch this video to learn more about intrapreneurship, and Ernst & Young's new white paper on the topic, from Maria Pinelli, Americas Director of Strategic Growth Markets with Ernst & Young LLP. For more information, please visit www.ey.com/innovation.
Net Impact - Intrapreneurship
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Toolbox
This section contains a selection of templates, tools, checklists and guides for business practices. We provide these materials on a free licence basis and ask only that the original source of the documents be acknowledged in any future use.
Business Plan for an Established Business
This business plan template has been designed for an established business.
Business Plan for a Start-up Business
This business plan template is designed for a start-up business.
Elevator Pitch Template
This elevator pitch template may be helpful to setting up your pitch to investors. It operates via an interactive PDF document. Simply open the PDF in your browser and fill in the different fields. You can then print the document or reset the document within the PDF and use it for organising your pitch presentation.
Links
Here are a series of external web links to sites dealing with entrepreneurship, innovation and small business management that we have selected for their quality and value. We hope you will find them useful.
Innovation Research & Policy Network (IRPN)
The Innovation Research & Policy Network (IRPN) within the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is an access point for the distribution of many research papers that cover topics relating to innovation and technological change. It contains many open access journals.
EPRN Network on SSRN
The Entrepreneurship Research & Policy Network (ERPN) within the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) offers a range of publications. Many are open access working papers and offer leading-edge research that is not yet published in major journals. It is sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The Conversation
News information and blog website. With content from some of Australia's leading academics.
Ideas, Information, News, OpinionStartup Smart
Australian Small Business Support Website from Amanda Gome.
Advice, Assistance, Small Business, SupportSmall Business UK
Useful small business support website from the United Kingdom.
Advice, Assistance, Small BusinessSmall Business NSW
Small business support website from the NSW Government with useful articles and toolkits.
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Diagnostics and Benchmarks
This section contains diagnostic and benchmarking information for small and entrepreneurial firms. It contains a series of reports on different industries and how various small firms are performing within these sectors. There are also reports on the innovation and commercialisation behaviour of firms from a range of countries based on original research undertaken by CEMI.
Marketing Metrics Quiz
This "Marketing Metrics Quick Quiz" examines your current business generation management and allows you to think about gaps in your marketing and customer creation process. The template allows you to prepare a preliminary plan of action for the creation of a business generating system.
Quick Quiz of your Marketing Practice
This is a Quick Quiz of your current marketing practice. Download the form as an interactive PDF document and complete the questions. You can then make notes as to what your future action should be to improve your marketing practices. When you are done you can print out the document.