What is 'Creating Shared Value'?

What is 'Creating Shared Value'?: What does the term "creating shared value" mean? It already has an acronym, CSV, and it's in fact a powerful concept for companies to use. Ultimately, it?s a strategy for developing the future market while also strengthening economies, the marketplace, communities, and corporate coffers. But the term runs the risk of being confused with the phrase "corporate social responsibility (CSR)" or, worse, with the idea of redistributing wealth. To combat the confusion, we are launching a video to illustrate and explain the concept of CSV.

Before working a room, rehearse

Before working a room, rehearse: Don't use your job title. Practise your greeting, then move on to engaging conversation

Six Reasons You Should Volunteer Your Way to A Job

Six Reasons You Should Volunteer Your Way to A Job: This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing three retirees, who are working part-time jobs they love? for pay.

The Top 9 Things That Ultimately Motivate Employees to Achieve

The Top 9 Things That Ultimately Motivate Employees to Achieve: When you wake up in the morning, what is the passion that fuels you to start your day?  Are you living this in your work?   If others asked you what drives you to achieve, would the answer be obvious?   The triggers that motivate people to achieve are unique for everyone.  Many would say its money; more people are starting to claim that they are driven to make a difference.  Regardless of what motivates you and drives you to reach peak performance - it must be managed and balanced.  Too much motivation in one area will weaken other parts of your game.

5 Leadership Behaviors Loyal Employees Trust

5 Leadership Behaviors Loyal Employees Trust:

Is any relationship ever completely reciprocal? Not really, because one party always wields more power over the other. This is a human behavior dynamic that is tough to ignore, especially when we look deeper at workplace culture and team dynamics. There are

Can't find a job in your field? Try this

Can't find a job in your field? Try this: Fresh out of school and can’t land a dream job? Don’t worry — all is not lost. Accept a “survival job” and use the time to develop portable skills that will help you once the job market looks better, says Vickie Milazzo author of the New York Times bestseller, Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman (WickedSuccess.com).

Sit At Your Boss's Dominant Side, Mimic His Motions And Other Tricks To A Promotion

Sit At Your Boss's Dominant Side, Mimic His Motions And Other Tricks To A Promotion: In today’s tough job market, tried-and-true maxims like staying late and volunteering for extra assignments are laughably commonplace. There is no competitive advantage when everyone on the staff shows up three hours early. Workers need to up their game. They need to exploit actions and behaviors that their coworkers and supervisors aren’t even aware of. They need to become masters of the unconscious mind.

3 Ways To Get Better Customer Service Using Social Media

3 Ways To Get Better Customer Service Using Social Media: Don't give me crappy service just because I'm bald.

Growing Great Ideas

Growing Great Ideas: It takes a lot of innovation to become one of Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies. Here's how the PROFIT 200 are ensuring they remain growth stars

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success

Seven Steps to Negotiating Success: Tried-and-true negotiation tactics from author and negotiation expert Selena Rezvani.

How to Make Work Really, Really Fun

How to Make Work Really, Really Fun: I had a long and lovely phone conversation with my son Ian last night.  He's on the verge of opening what I think of as a "craft cafe" in Brooklyn - something he and his business partner have been moving toward for the past two years - and I can hear the combination of joy, exhaustion, hope, concern, and intention in his voice.

Simple Sales Tips for Growing Your Customer Base

Simple Sales Tips for Growing Your Customer Base: In this book excerpt, Steve Blank and Bob Dorf outline lean methods to get customers to spend more, and to send referrals your way.

For a Successful Job Search: Solve Someone's Problem

For a Successful Job Search: Solve Someone's Problem: The surest way to get a new job is to solve someone's problem. Follow these three steps:

Getting your Business Funded - Notes from Crowdfunding Made Simple Address

Getting your Business Funded - Notes from Crowdfunding Made Simple Address: Last week I delivered the keynote address at the first Crowdfunding Made Simple conference in Salt Lake City, sponsored by the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA). The CfPA plans another Salt Lake City event within the next several months.  The first event was well received by more than 200 attendees.  The slides from my presentation are available at http://www.slideshare.net/cconner01/crowdfunding-made-easy-conference-may-31-2012-slc.

6 Steps to a Successful Business Launch

6 Steps to a Successful Business Launch: How the founders of Tender Greens turned farm-fresh fare into a $16 million business -- and you can, too.

7 Business Mistakes Serial Entrepreneurs Never Make (Twice)

7 Business Mistakes Serial Entrepreneurs Never Make (Twice): “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” Eleanor Roosevelt - US Diplomat & Wife of President Franklin Roosevelt

How to Get Leadership Skills While Doing Good

How to Get Leadership Skills While Doing Good: Let’s face it: When you’re the head of a small business, you want to develop your leadership skills and, if you are like most entrepreneurs, contribute to your community. What if you could do good and beef up your leadership skills at the same time?

Seven Reasons to Keep Growing

Seven Reasons to Keep Growing: Don't take your eye off the ball, even if you want to sell in future

The Secret to Winning New Business

The Secret to Winning New Business: That lucrative new account is yours – if you can beat out the other finalists. So how do you make an impression that counts? According to business development consultant and former adman Kevin Allen, you have to look beyond your prospect’s stated needs – and instead focus on their secret wants. In The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following, he argues that the business world is far from a strictly rational, fact-based arena. “Behind every decision,” he says, “there’s an unspoken, visceral motivation.”

Do You Feel Underappreciated? You're Only 5 (Small) Steps Away From Ending The Pain

Do You Feel Underappreciated? You're Only 5 (Small) Steps Away From Ending The Pain: A few weeks ago at the end of an interview with NBC News anchor Brian Williams, David Letterman launched into a diatribe defending President Obama’s record. Pausing for a breath, Letterman asked –to no one and everyone simultaneously— “What more do we want this man to do for us… honest to God?”  I guess Letterman felt Mr. Obama was underappreciated.

7 Tips to Create Winning Window Displays

7 Tips to Create Winning Window Displays: How to design windows that will command attention and lure shoppers into your store.

3 Must Haves For Assembling A Winning Team

3 Must Haves For Assembling A Winning Team: Just as Marvel Comics gathered together a bevy of mutants, gods, spies, and human beings with mechanical suits of armor to form a team of unstoppable superheroes known for their signature tagline "Avengers Assemble!" so must a business do likewise with its staff. Minus the whole "Hulk Smash!" bit, of course.

7 Reasons Networking Can Be a Professional Development Boot Camp

7 Reasons Networking Can Be a Professional Development Boot Camp: How many times do you say to yourself that you need to meet more people? That your circle of influence needs to be strengthened? That your skills and talents have yet to be discovered? Your career requires you to network and in today’s marketplace you must be more active than ever. But networking requires planning. An approach that is strategic and measurable; that you can learn from each time you introduce yourself to a new crowd or reacquaint yourself with an old one. If you are strategic and view networking through an opportunity lens, it can serve as a powerful professional development boot camp experience.

The Right Way to Help a Friend Job Search

The Right Way to Help a Friend Job Search: Recently a girlfriend of mine asked me to have dinner. “I’m thinking of leaving my job,” she said. “I think it’s just time to go, and I thought you would know what to do.”

What to Do When They Say 'No'

What to Do When They Say 'No': Master negotiators say the negotiation doesn't truly begin until the parties reach impasse. Back at the dawn of my negotiation career, this made as much sense to me as a zen koan. You know, like the sound of one hand clapping.

WOW Your Audience! Four Ways To Deliver Masterful Presentations

WOW Your Audience! Four Ways To Deliver Masterful Presentations: You don’t need to follow all the rules of communication experts in order to be an extraordinary speaker; in fact sometimes you should even do the opposite of what they tell you. There are many ways to WOW your audience, and here are four of the best of them.

What Employees Secretly Want

What Employees Secretly Want: Beyond momentary oscillations in motivational direction (which are largely unpredictable), team members in most cases will demonstrate a built-in bias towards certain categories of “big picture” personal goals. This is a great benefit to everyone when those goals are tightly aligned with your business needs. This can be a problem when the goals being pursued are not aligned with your needs. Economists call such situations “divergent interests", which arise more often than you may think. Identifying intrinsic biases and mitigating any resulting divergence is a good strategy for management. Here are some archetypes that I have seen:

How to Deal with Difficult Co-Workers

How to Deal with Difficult Co-Workers: We?ve all had a co-worker who?s driven us nuts ? a micromanaging boss, a suckup colleague, a slacker employee. You might think your professional life would improve dramatically if they weren?t around. But, says Diana McLain Smith, author of The Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break the Success of Leaders and Organizations, they could actually be your ticket to dramatic professional growth. ?Anytime you find yourself up against somebody who frustrates you, that person is telling you that you?re at the limits of your competence,? she says. ?That?s why you?re frustrated - because you don?t know how to deal with them. You need to make a conscious choice: do you need to learn how to deal with that person in order to be successful??

Why Brand Building Is Important

Why Brand Building Is Important: Scott Goodson is the founder of StrawberryFrog. His first book, Uprising about building brands in the age of uprisings and movements has been published by McGraw Hill.

Four Steps To Engage Your Ultra-Connected Audience

Four Steps To Engage Your Ultra-Connected Audience: This article is by Melissa Parrish, senior analyst at Forrester Research, serving interactive marketing professionals. She is an expert in mobile marketing, social marketing, and communities. Read her blog at blogs.forrester.com/Melissa_parrish, and follow her on Twitter @melissarparrish.

Shark Tank Roundtable - What They Look For When Investing

Shark Tank Roundtable - What They Look For When Investing: Startup month continues at Forbes and this is part two of a six part series of interviews with the eight Sharks from ABC's Shark Tank. Yesterday, I asked the sharks about their best and worst deals and now they are on the spot to talk about the criteria they use when selecting which companies to invest in.

Four Steps to Becoming a Corporate Thought Leader

Four Steps to Becoming a Corporate Thought Leader: Ben Boyd is in the business of helping companies become thought leaders. The global chair of the corporate practice at PR firm Edelman, Boyd advises leading corporations on how to break through the clutter of today’s media environment. His advice? Thought leadership starts with understanding who you are and asking the right questions. “You can’t aspire to be something you’re not,” says Boyd. “In today’s world, who you are is how you are” – meaning that your actions become your public identity.  Here are his four tips to help your company become a thought leader.

Bringing on a Business Partner? Avoid This Common Mistake

Bringing on a Business Partner? Avoid This Common Mistake: Having a business partner can be invaluable. Having the wrong--or no--partnership agreements can be disastrous.

5 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur in Your Career

5 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur in Your Career: Starting and running a new business isn?t for everyone?but regardless of your career, there?s something to be said for the ?entrepreneurial spirit.?

Success Is Easy: 5 Things Executives Can Learn From The Gaping Void

Success Is Easy: 5 Things Executives Can Learn From The Gaping Void: “Success is easy: All you have to do is learn how to use your career the same way Hendrix used his guitar.” – Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void

Resource: Greening Your Company

Resource: Greening Your Company: Webinar helps business leaders formulate a corporate social responsibility plan

Compass Principles: Moving in the Right Direction

Compass Principles: Moving in the Right Direction: My partner in crime, Jennifer Tescher, who runs the Center for Financial Services Innovation, is leading a bold movement to increase quality in consumer finance.  High time!  Here's what she has to say:

How To Quit With Class

How To Quit With Class: Even as the economy struggles to recover and add jobs, workers keep moving around, sometimes for greener pastures. Career coaches and human resource pros agree that it's best to leave the best possible impression whenever you exit a job, no matter the circumstances. Here are some essential things to do to quit with class.

Your Ideal Startup

Your Ideal Startup: Your new business will depend on your passions, talents, skills and goals. You will need to keep all these things in mind when shopping for a business or coming up with that big idea

Value Your Work

Value Your Work: Let’s face it, there is absolutely no point in busting your butt to go broke

How To Deal With A Youger Boss

How To Deal With A Youger Boss: In early 2009, when Forbes combined its online and magazine staffs, I found myself reporting to a younger boss for the first time in my 30-year career. It wasn’t easy. I knew my boss was smart and digitally savvy, but I chafed in the deputy role. I admit it: I felt both superior and a touch disdainful, just because of the age difference.

How To Turn Enemies Into Allies

How To Turn Enemies Into Allies: This is a guest post by Simon North, founder of career consultants Position Ignition and co-author of the book 135 Networking Career Tips.

Do More With Less: 7 Ways to Stretch Your Startup Dollars

Do More With Less: 7 Ways to Stretch Your Startup Dollars: After founding two companies of my own and surviving an entire summer in Silicon Valley on only $250, I'm familiar with the ins and outs of stretching a dollar. Arriving at smart decisions, making sacrifices, and putting yourself out there are the essentials of becoming a success on a small budget.

3 Startup Secrets From A Serial Entrepreneur

3 Startup Secrets From A Serial Entrepreneur: Packed in like sardines.
Brandon Mills and 90% of the population.

Six questions to ask your salespeople

Six questions to ask your salespeople: How do you tell great salespeople from the rest of the pack?

How To Get An Awesome Internship

How To Get An Awesome Internship: There are a jazillion websites, blog posts, articles, books, seminars and YouTube videos on how to land an internship.

Starting Out

Starting Out: Learning to face new hurdles everyday is the role of a burgeoning entrepreneur

10 Career Lessons From A Book About Bird Carvers

10 Career Lessons From A Book About Bird Carvers: Often in journalism one story leads to another. That was certainly the case with my article, "Eight Ways To Make Collecting Pay Off," for the 2012 FORBES magazine Investment Guide.

The Secret to Winning New Business

The Secret to Winning New Business: That lucrative new account is yours – if you can beat out the other finalists. So how do you make an impression that counts? According to business development consultant and former adman Kevin Allen, you have to look beyond your prospect’s stated needs – and instead focus on their secret wants. In The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following, he argues that the business world is far from a strictly rational, fact-based arena. “Behind every decision,” he says, “there’s an unspoken, visceral motivation.”

Leadership Tip: It's How You Act, Not Your Position

Leadership Tip: It's How You Act, Not Your Position: At its heart, leadership is about taking initiative and influencing those around you ? and that doesn?t just apply to people at the top of an organizational hierarchy. Everyone in an organization can demonstrate leadership, and they should.

Sell Your Business Faster

Sell Your Business Faster: Offering seller financing can attract more buyers and a better price

The Five-Step Plan To Get Your Mojo Back

The Five-Step Plan To Get Your Mojo Back: Last week, I spoke to a group of trainees in one of  the top wealth management programs in the world. If you saw the Pursuit of Happyness, then you know their life. Six months of intensive work, endless cold calls to find clients, and a high all-or-nothing benchmark of client money to get under management by the end of the program.

5 Crippling Characteristics Entrepreneurs Need to Get Over

5 Crippling Characteristics Entrepreneurs Need to Get Over: Back in 1999, every time I walked into a coffee shop in Austin, Texas, I’d overhear people talking about their Internet startup plans.

Are You Social Enough?

Are You Social Enough?: SMBs could lose customers to national companies if they don't improve digital commerce

5 Leadership Behaviors Loyal Employees Trust

5 Leadership Behaviors Loyal Employees Trust: Is any relationship ever completely reciprocal? Not really, because one party always wields more power over the other. This is a human behavior dynamic that is tough to ignore, especially when we look deeper at workplace culture and team dynamics. There are

Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders

Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders: There?s lots of articles and talk about leadership these days. The coming elections, the US slow economic recovery and the debates about outsourcing ?killing American jobs? are just a few of the topics. Then there are the obvious leadership flaws?immoral, illegal and unethical behavior?and these usually make the headlines.

Trying to Maintain Your Online Reputation

Trying to Maintain Your Online Reputation: It's nearly impossible to squelch negative online material. A good-faith, public effort to deal with the problem may turn detractors into advocates

The Secret to Success Without Stress

The Secret to Success Without Stress: I haven’t blogged for a week. Hell, I haven’t done anything for a week. Except see the doctor. Who told me I had the flu…and to stay in bed.

10 Brilliant Apps Small Businesses Should Use

10 Brilliant Apps Small Businesses Should Use: As apps become more prevalent and more powerful, entrepreneurs and small business owners are relying on these savvy tools to help their businesses grow and run more smoothly. These top 10 mobile and web apps can get you organized, connected and visible - and they will likely contribute to your success:
1) Evernote
Ever had a great idea while flying cross-country? Evernote is an app that makes sure users “Remember Everything.” By allowing users to store, organize and share text, photos, and voice notes, entrepreneurs can easily keep track of all of their brilliant ideas. The popular app has secured $166 million in funding and acquired web startups Skitch and Penultimate to add to their growing list of features.
2) Google Drive

How to Brainstorm a Great Business Name

How to Brainstorm a Great Business Name: The right name for your company is out there. Here's how to find it.

The Behavioral Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur

The Behavioral Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur: This guest post was written by Sangeeta Badal, Ph.D., lead researcher for Gallup’s Entrepreneurship and Job Creation initiative, and Joseph H. Streur, Ph.D., a principal with Gallup, specializing in employee selection consulting and research.

Startup Month: Entrepreneurs And Investors Weigh In On How To Launch A Business

Startup Month: Entrepreneurs And Investors Weigh In On How To Launch A Business: We're trying something new on the Entrepreneurs Channel at forbes.com. Declaring June "Startup Month," we've asked dozens of our expert contributors--entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, journalists, academics, consultants, marketing specialists, lawyers and accountants--to share their personal stories and practical advice about launching a business.

5 Ways to Hatch Your Next Business Idea

5 Ways to Hatch Your Next Business Idea: The first step in building a successful business is to stand out from the crowd. Here's a real-world, step-by-step guide to distinguishing yourself and your product.

Why Do Companies Fail?

Why Do Companies Fail?: On May 27, 2002, FORTUNE Magazine ran a cover story on why companies fail.  I kept that magazine and look at it every so often – which every corporate manager should do.  It keeps me on my toes.

4 Non-Annoying Ways to Follow Up After an Interview

4 Non-Annoying Ways to Follow Up After an Interview: You landed the interview, and as far as you’re concerned? You nailed that sucker.

Motivating Employees to Work As Hard As You (Video)

Motivating Employees to Work As Hard As You (Video): As a startup entrepreneur, Amy Yazdian felt she had little leverage to demand perfection from her staff. Hear how she learned to get employees fired up, plus expert tips.