Blog
Raising capital from VCs
I spoke recently at the Women’s Leadership Exchange New York Conference, over at MetLife. Joining me on a panel focused on sharing strategies to help grow your business were the incomparable Vera Moore (founder of Vera Moore Cosmetics) and Sue Malone (one of the...
5 Keys to Innovation CX (Idean 2013 UX Summit, Part 4)
I’ve been posting recently, from my talk at the Idean UX/CX conference, about the inter-relationship between innovation and intrapreneurship. The earlier posts lead to the idea that thinking of your employees as your customers can help you create the...
CX to the Rescue (Idean 2013 UX Summit, Part 3)
I said in my earlier posts from the Idean 2013 UX Summit that innovation means intrapreneurship, so if they want innovation company leaders need to get past their often unrecognized resistance to having their employees act entrepreneurially. If we’re going to...
OMG, 10,000 Entrepreneurs! (Idean 2013 UX Summit, Part 2)
I closed the previous post from my keynote at the Idean 2013 UX Summit with the observation that when employers say they want more innovation, what that really means is they want more intrapreneurship. But paradoxically – and problematically – I’ve also found that...
Innovation Paralysis (Idean 2013 UX Summit, Part 1)
I’m just back from a terrific conference produced by Idean, a leading global design agency that creates world-class User Experience. They passionately believe, as I do, that “life is too short for crappy UX!” This year’s conference, attended by business...
The Way We Live Now Revisited
Three years ago, I did a post on Anthony Trollope’s novel The Way We are Now, which former HBS professor Amar Bhide (now at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) had recommended to me as " the definitve work of business fiction." So I was excited to...
War of the Models
Anyone who knows me knows I'm fascinated by business models. I love analyzing them and thinking up new ones that can be game changing. Over the last few months I've been blown away by the number of articles written about evolving business models in many, many...
Get Out There and Play
With two eighteen-month-old sons, I’m more attuned than I used to be to news about education, so my eye was caught by a piece in The New York Times about the "4th R" – Recess. It seems that a series of studies, including a recently published one in the...
The Perfect Fit
Over the weekend I belatedly added to my winter wardrobe that new staple, a sleekly designed, precisely fitted, insulated black coat. I got mine at Searle, where they do a creditable version that's cut well for me, and the experience of buying it was an...
Graciousness — Never Goes Out of Style
As I write this I’m sitting in the sparely designed Museum Hill Cafe, part of a complex of small museums on a hill overlooking Santa Fe New Mexico. The views of the mountains are beautiful but that’s not why I’ve kept coming back here during my stay in Santa Fe....
Saving, A Drop at A Time
The New York Times Sunday Business Section runs a regular column called "Job Market," full of advice for wage slaves, and today's installment was about watching how you spend your money. The examples given are all about the things people spend on...
Making Mistakes for Fun and Profit
Yesterday, I spoke at the Women’s Leadership Exchange Conference in Tempe, Arizona. The keynote speaker was Poppy King, better known as The Lipstick Queen. She recently came out with a book detailing her adventures as an entrepreneur. Adventures are what she sure has...
What is Innovation?
Lately I’ve been doing some research in the area of corporate innovation. It’s part of a project I’m working on. So I’ve been reading books like "Sticky Wisdom: How to Start a Creative Revolution at Work" from ?WhatIf! The Innovation Company and "The...
Beth in BusinessWeek SmallBiz
Last October I surprised myself by accepting an opportunity to speak at the Women’s Leadership Exchange’s New York Conference, even though my new twins were barely two months old. As you may know, the WLE asks its speakers to provide speed coaching to the attendees....
Quarterbacks and CEOs
With the fourth quarter half over in Superbowl LXII, and the Patriots trailing by 3, Patriot quarterback Tom Brady found himself on his own 20 yard line. Brady got a first down, and then another, but with less than six minutes left, the TV commentators were calling it...
Safety First
Today I went to a meeting of Big City Moms to hear a talk by a baby-proofing expert. It’s something I really need to know about now that my twin boys are rolling over and on the verge of crawling. James, who looks a lot like Jon Bon Jovi, was very impressive as he...
New Year’s Resolve
This time of year there’s a lot of attention paid to the self-improvement promises we’re making to ourselves for the new year. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, small business owners make resolutions for their businesses too. And most businesses are no better...
An Unexpected Insight
I was surprised by what I read in this morning’s New York Times Week In Review about how the late Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto built the tremendous support from American governments that was crucial in reaching her dream -- to become prime minister of Pakistan...
Coming Of Age, Not Just In Samoa: Anthropology and Business
Ever since I switched from being a pre-vet major (yes, I went to college expecting to become a large animal veterinarian) to anthropology, I’ve been barraged by questions like "why anthropology?" and "what can you possibly do with an anthropology major,...
Beach Thoughts on Business Goals
Over Thanksgiving I traveled south to the sun to visit a friend who founded a eco-resort on a tropical beach. Four years ago, my friend had an idea for a small tour business. Now, her tours have a permanent home at the two boutique hotels she owns. And she owns...
Creating A Tool That Works For Your Company
I don’t have to tell you how important it is to have a business plan. Writing a business plan is about putting together the blueprint for your company -- articulating your vision and the strategies to take to get you there. The process of figuring out what your plan...
Business Models and The Way We Live Now
I’ve been immersed in thoughts of business models recently because I’ve been on the lecture circuit talking about them. In my downtime and on flights, I’ve finally gotten to delve into Anthony Trollope’s "The Way We Live Now," which was first recommended to...
UPDATE on Credit Scores
Personal credit scores just got more interesting. FICO no longer has a lock on them. According to an article in today’s New York Times, the three credit reporting agencies have gotten together to come up with another rating system -- Vantage Score -- that takes more...
Courting Your Customer
I was catching up on Kirsten Osolind’s re:invention blog today (it’s one of the best I’ve seen for women entrepreneurs). The June 19th entry "Brand Courtship & the Excellent Women’s Club (EWC): The Top 10 Ways to Attract a Woman, Make Her Fall in Love, and...
Jury Duty — All The Right Answers
I’ve just spent the last few days fulfilling my obligation to serve as a juror in the New York County Criminal Court. While most of people in my jury pool just wanted to do their duty with the least disruption of their normal lives, there were two other large groups....
Numbers on Trial
I was invited recently to be a juror in a mock trial for Professor Michael Finkelstein’s Statistics for Lawyers class at Columbia University Law School. The core issue of the trial was whether or not a major teaching hospital was discriminating against women, as to...
An Era Passes at iVillage
Today it was announced that NBC Universal purchased iVillage for $600 million in cash. I have mixed feelings about this deal. I liked the idea of iVillage being independent; standing on its own. Despite all the knocks the company has received, I’ve always...
Stay On Top of Your Credit Score
Catching up on my magazine reading on the plane to Colorado, I found a terrific article in BusinessWeek on managing your personal credit score. It caught my eye because I’d just finished solving a credit score problem of my own. My problem began with a Sprint account...
Business Incubators — Bad For Your Health
I thought the incubator concept was dead. But, against all logic, new ones keep opening. So, I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise that I’ve been asked by some entrepreneurs whether or not they should "join" one. I have to say, I laughed out loud at the...
Guide and Seek? The Right and Wrong of Hiring a Fundraising Advisor
I’m an avid reader of Entrepreneur Magazine. I’m also someone who’s been both an entrepreneur in pursuit of capital and an advisor to companies in their search for capital. I know firsthand how complicated it can be deciding to hire an advisor, finding the right one,...
The Light at the End of the Tunnel — Is It Really The Other End or Is It An Oncoming Train?
I was at a breakfast for entrepreneurs the other day, and NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke. The highlight for me of his talk was when he likened entrepreneurship to being on a train in a tunnel and wondering if that light at the other end was another train coming...
Are Your Prescriptions Real?
Did you know that the US ranks #1 in the world for reported incidents of counterfeit, stolen, and diverted legal pharmaceutical drugs? That’s what I read in a recent article in USA Today. The article goes on to say that most estimates place the incidents of...
“Leaving Out The Parts People Skip” — Does Elmore Leonard Have It Right?
You can’t argue with success like Elmore Leonard’s (40 novels including over a dozen best-sellers and a bundle of movies over a 50-year career.) So, when he gives his formula for success -- "I leave out the parts people skip," you have to take notice. As I...
Cold Hard Cash or A Dream Team of Mentors — What’s More Important?
At a conference recently, a reporter asked me who I thought was doing a good job at providing capital to businesses owned by women. While women-owned businesses represent nearly 50% of all businesses in the US, they receive a disproportionately small percentage...