Zig Ziglar states that "objections are expressions of interest." If people do NOT object to your creative idea, they may NOT be engaged enough to think about your ideas. Successful innovators appreciate objections because they demonstrate that people are engaged in thinking about proposed ideas.
 
If you get no objections, you may not have much engagement. Successful innovators also "anticipate" potential objections and prepare responses to those objections in advance. According to the original Pocket Persuader tool, created by Gerald "Solutionman" Haman, the 10 Most Common Objections are easy to anticipate. You've heard them before and here is Haman's list:

In the tech industry saying that something is dead actually means “It’s on the decline.” And yes, the phone call is on an inexorable decline.

My original title for this post was “The Phone Call Will Be Dead In __ Years” but as consumer inertia is somehow still keeping our parent company Aol in the dialup business,  I thought it might be prudent not to include an ETA on the death of the call.

Less obsolete but more annoying than a handwritten letter, the phone call is fading as a mode of communication even if the nostalgic will be singing its praises for awhile. We reached a breaking point in 2008 when text messaging topped mobile phone calling in usage, and we’ve been living in a world dominated by text based communication ever since (Thanks Twitter).

Does the Internet tend towards natural monoplies? Columbia Law professor Tim Wu makes a strong argument that it does in an Op-Ed in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. While there is plenty of diversity on the Internet and few barriers to setting up shop, he points out that category after category is dominated by a single firm: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, and eBay.

Wu writes:

The Internet has long been held up as a model for what the free market is supposed to look like—competition in its purest form. So why does it look increasingly like a Monopoly board? Most of the major sectors today are controlled by one dominant company or an oligopoly. Google “owns” search; Facebook, social networking; eBay rules auctions; Apple dominates online content delivery; Amazon, retail; and so on.

If you define a market narrowly enough, it is easy to make any company look like a monopoly. But let’s concede that the Internet creates a lot of winner-take-most, if not a winner-take-all, situations. (A company can effectively have monopoly power without technically owning 100 percent of the market). The bigger question is: How durable are information monopolies on the Internet?

Kansas City is home to the Kauffman Foundation, a $2 billion organization dedicated entirely to research and funding of entrepreneurial efforts. And beginning February, entrepreneurs will descend upon the city in KC’s version of a startup incubator: Kauffman Labs, which is paying entrepreneurs for up to six months while they build out their startups. But while the city hosts several of Kauffman's offspring--and there is an emerging angel investment community that's being activated to support homegrown talent--it isn't yet a hotbed of startup activity.

Bo Fishback, who runs Kauffman Labs, told us about the Kauffman legacy and why Kansas City’s budding entrepreneurial ecosystem has long-term potential.

The State of Kansas is one of the major reasons that entrepreneurs have found Kansas City attractive. 24 years ago the Kansas Technology Enterpreise Corporation (KTEC) was created and stil remains one of the best Innovation Based Economic Development organoizations in the country. KTEC helped support the creation of the Kansas Biosciencience Authority (KBA) which is one of the most uniquely funded Bioscience economic development programs in the Country.Also the Pipeline entrepreneurial support program has become one of the best in the Country in only three short years.These organizations plus those mentioned in the article make the Kansas City Region a great Silicon Prairie" and an excellent  place to start and grow your business....................Rich Bendis, was the first Chairaman of the Board and former CEO of KTEC, and still maintains a home in Overland Park, Kansas.

In the 1940’s Rosie the Riveter was the woman of the day.

In the Seventies, Women’s Liberation raised our pay.

Now in 2010, Women Entrepreneurs and those reentering the workforce are leading the way.

Our country needed women to work when our men went into WWII. We obliged, and felt more liberated than ever.  At the end of the war most women went back home. Those who remained in the workforce often felt trapped under a glass ceiling.

Equal pay for equal work was the new – and just – cause. At least for some, the glass ceiling was raised and women – the daughters and grand-daughters of Rosie the Riveter – forged ahead in the work place.

Logo plays an important role for making brand’s identity. Logo design must be creative so it can look beautiful, unique and catchy. Big companies spend thousands of dollars to get desired logo for their brand. I browsed few logo galleries to show some of the latest logo creations, and here are 30 Creative logo designs for Inspiration you can notice that most of presented below logos take a very creative approach.

Which one is your favorite?

In my last blog, I discussed the benefits of starting up your own business- being an entrepreneur has many benefits, especially if your business gets off the ground successfully.  But, what if your risk doesn’t pay off? Many times entrepreneurs can take a huge hit both financially and personally if their dreams of a successful business never come true.  So why, as an entrepreneur, would it be worth the risk?  For most, it is the financial and professional payoff.  But, in order to be willing to take that risk, entrepreneurs need to be fully aware of the different pitfalls and problems that they may encounter.  Here are some of the most popular pitfalls that you should be aware of if you are thinking about heading down the entrepreneurship path…

1.       You picked the wrong partner:  Many times when starting a business, entrepreneurs begin with a partner.  By sharing responsibilities, bouncing ideas off of one another, and conjoining skill sets, business partners can be successful.  Unfortunately, many businesses fail due to the fact that sometimes entrepreneurs confuse best friends with business partners.  For example, in the 2001 documentary Startup.com, long time friends Tom and Kaleil decide to start a government website together but end up losing it all, including their friendship for a while.  Why did this happen? Although Tom and Kaleil got along great as best friends, they did not fully evaluate one another’s skill sets and how they could/would be able to work with one another while running a company.  Eventually, as their business and website grew, struggled, and eventually failed, so did their friendship.  Tom and Kaleil did not have personalities that could maintain a friendship while running a business with shared leadership.  Before thinking about starting up a business with a friend, make sure that as business partners you can work together and build off one another to be successful and efficient, not destructive and disorganized.

The election is history and now LePage is Maine's governor to be.

As with the nation, the economy, the economy, and the economy are the first order impacting the now and future Maine. Inseparable from the economic debate is a debate about which political philosophy will lead Maine into the new decade and beyond.

LePage campaigned as a constitutionalist. Lepage has been among those that say it is not the role of government to create jobs, but rather to create an environment, which furthers creation of private sector jobs. The method by which the government influences the environment is slippery territory, which is why the constitution needs to be applied like a golden rule.

To my knowledge, LePage has not expressed a view on the entrenched structure of state capitalism, which the Maine legislature has constructed during the last fifteen years. The legislation often reads like a corporate business plan. It is clear that our past and current legislature and administrations believed that it is their role to manage Maine’s economy and to move Maine toward their vision of the way we ought to be. The legislature has repeatedly utilized special acts of legislation to charter corporation after corporation, always promoting and justifying the acts with the vision that they are creating jobs.

A lot of executives have noticed that the workplace is being flooded by a new generation of workers, and they are questioning who will be the winners, and who will be the losers. In reality, Gen-Y is here, and they are already inheriting our businesses, so let’s figure out how to make them winners, or we will all be losers.

By definition, Gen-Y is the generation born between 1977 and 1995 (synonymous with Millennials). There are about 80 million of them, and nearly two-thirds of them are already in the work force with full- or part-time jobs. They will inevitably be taking over after Gen-X from the baby boomers, who are now running most companies, but pushing 60.

Morley Safer of CBS News 60 Minutes fame, has long been the negative voice with his tongue-in-cheek quotes like “They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in that belief, you can take your job and shove it.”

WARNING: Holding a cellphone against your ear may be hazardous to your health. So may stuffing it in a pocket against your body.

I’m paraphrasing here. But the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch; Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch.

The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers. The United States has 292 million wireless numbers in use, approaching one for every adult and child, according to C.T.I.A.-The Wireless Association, the cellphone industry’s primary trade group. It says that as of June, about a quarter of domestic households were wireless-only.

The answer to improving Iowa's economy lies more with igniting startup companies such as BodyViz, Dwolla and Sensr than luring big companies like Google, IBM and Microsoft to the state, influential business leaders believe.

Members of the newly created Iowa Innovation Council say the state needs to drive its economy through innovation, a long-term structural change that promises Iowans better-paying jobs.

The group plans to start a seed fund, used to invest in young companies, raising as much as $100 million in private investment within three years. The fund would invest $500,000 to $3 million in promising startup companies, targeting bioscience, advanced manufacturing and information technology, organizers say.

Innovation America and Rich Bendis have the priviledge of consulting with the Iowa Innovation Council to develop a  proactive, long term Innovation Road Map and implementation plan. Iowa has the opportunity to emerge as a new leader in Innovation Based Economic Development and enjoys  the public/private partnership support and leadership necessary to execute its strategy.

Michael Finney, the Ann Arbor region’s economic development leader, will help map out economic development strategy as a key member of Governor-elect Rick Snyder’s transition team, Snyder announced today.

The appointment, first reported this morning by AnnArbor.com, marks the second time Snyder has personally recruited Finney to direct an economic development initiative. Snyder, an Ann Arbor venture capitalist who will become Michigan’s 48th governor on Jan. 1, co-founded Ann Arbor SPARK in 2005 and then convinced Finney to become the group’s first president and CEO.

Finney is widely considered a possible candidate to become the next CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., but that’s just speculation at this point, Snyder spokesman Bill Nowling said.

SAN FRANCISCO (Venture Capital Journal) - DCM and Sequoia Capital China are betting they can take a successful model and apply it in China.

The two firms have invested $20 million in a Series A round of funding in Vipshop (www.vipshop.com), an online retailer in China, similar to the U.S.-based Gilt Groupe or the European-based Privalia and Vente Privee. The companies sell high-end apparel and accessories for discounts in limited-time opportunities, what's known as flash sales.

The funding of Vipshop is the Beijing-based company's first institutional round of funding. Vipshop, founded in 2008, had previously raised a small amount of money from friends and family, according to DCM General Partner Tom Blaisdell.

The Indian technology industry got its start running call centers and doing low-level IT work for western firms. Then, in the 2000s, it started taking on higher-level IT tasks, offering management consulting services, and performing sophisticated R&D. Now there is another transition happening, one far more significant: a transition to development of innovative technology products.  Instead of providing IT services as the big outsourcing companies do, a new breed of startups is developing high-value products based on intellectual property. The Indian industry group NASSCOM estimates that in 2008, the country’s software product revenues totaled $1.64 billion. It forecasts that this will grow to $11 billion per year by 2015.

I attended the NASSCOM Product Enclave in Bangalore, this week, and gave several talks to the 1000+ entrepreneurs in attendance. I was surprised at the changes that are powering the new transition: its tech workers are leaving high-paying jobs in IT services, and kids out of school are ignoring social taboos against failure and defying marriage customs to become entrepreneurs.  A few Americans are also joining the fray, starting their ventures in India rather than in Silicon Valley. Though in China, returnees from the U.S. are fuelling the entrepreneurship boom, they aren’t as important in India. Sadly for my Indian friends in Silicon Valley who are looking to return home, returnees—formerly in high demand and treated like rock stars—are out of vogue and now treated like rocks.

Technology 2020′s Innovation Valley Technology Council presented its annual Navigator Awards during the final day of the Entrepreneurial Imperative 2010 Conference. Awards of excellence were given for this year’s top entrepreneur, researcher, and technology company, as well as for the Tech Council member of the year and to the member who has shown exceptional community service.

More than 300 business and community leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs attended the two-day forum that explored how the region can accelerate the growth and assure the success for those entrepreneurs who choose to start and grow new ventures in the valley. The Navigator Awards Ceremony has become a significant part of the annual conference.

There’s no other place in the nation where you can go to find the corridor of excellence that we have right here in the Innovation Valley,” said John Hopkins, Tech Council chairman.  “Our 2010 Navigator Award winners are outstanding examples of the exemplary talent and entrepreneurial spirit that’s found here.”

Do you have a mentor or someone that you follow to help fuel your Entrepreneurial Drive?

Well if you don’t, get one! – Having a mentor is a great way to keep that Entrepreneurial flame alight, following in the footsteps of a successful person who has already been in your shoes and focused on their dream hard enough to make it a reality.

By following a mentor and studying the process which took them from being an ordinary person to a wealthy and successful entrepreneur, you are increasing the chances of becoming a success yourself.

When looking for inspiration I often find myself consulting Google for quotes and interesting nuggets of information that has been said by some of the world’s most extraordinary entrepreneurs. In a way it is a reminder that other people have experienced what you too are facing, and that if you are relentless when pursuing your goals, you can and will achieve them!

Do you know that:

• more than three quarters of post-1995 increase in productivity growth could be traced to science investments [D. W. Jorgenson, M. S. Ho, K. J. Stiroh, J. Econ. Perspect. 22, 3 (2008)]
• 1/3 of SBIRs reported involvement with a university including founder was a former academic, faculty were consultants, universities were subcontractors, or graduate students were employed
• 20 year returns for Early/Seed VCs was 20.6%, compared to 13.8% for Later Stage VCs and 8.2% for the S&P 500
• 8 percent of all university startups go public, in comparison to a "going public rate" of only 0.07 percent for other U.S. enterprises - a 114x difference
• over 400 university startups are created nationally each year based on federally funded R&D, which included Google, Netscape, Genentech, Lycos, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and Cisco Systems
• Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old or less
• 68% of university startups created between 1980 to 2000 remained in business in 2001, while regular startups experienced a 90% failure rate during that same time period

Politicians often tout the benefits of going green from both an environmental and economic standpoint. After all, going green helps the economy by expanding the energy sector to one reliant primarily on fossil fuels to one that includes alternative and renewable sources which tend to be cleaner for the environment. Yet, there are varying numbers about how many jobs are truly created in a "Green Economy." Determining how many jobs are created is difficult because defining what is green and what is not is open to all kinds of interpretation.

The Center for American Progress seems to suggest that the green economy can create a lot of jobs through infrastructure rebuilding. For example, The Center for American Progress reports that "This green recovery and infrastructure investment program would: Create 2 million new jobs in the nation over two years, Bolster employment within construction and manufacturing. Construction employment has fallen from 8 million to 7.2 million over the past two years due to the housing bubble collapse. The Green Recovery can, at the least, bring back these lost 800,000 construction jobs." When framed in terms of manufacturing and infrastructure, perhaps the green economy can create 2 million jobs. So, for example, installing things like wind mills and solar panels on homes definitely has huge upside and can create the 2 million jobs cited by The Center for American Progress.

There is no doubt that both inspiration and perspiration are always required in a startup. Yet many people seem to be stuck on one end or other of this equation – all perspiration with no dream, or all inspiration with no reality. Success is the right balance of both for fun and profit.

Aspiring entrepreneurs ask me why their great idea hasn’t sold; they talk about it endlessly, and they expect others to do the development, finance, and marketing work for them. Those at the other extreme don’t look up from the grindstone long enough to notice whether all their work is producing sweat equity or just sweat.

Starting a business may be fun, but it’s not easy. No matter how many times you’ve done it – the stresses are tremendous. It can also be very inspiring, as you watch your dream morph into reality, or as you feel each little element of success:

* Watch your team develop new skills. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing the results of your mentoring and leadership. Your own learning should be the biggest inspiration of all.

* Your solution fills a real market need. Truly satisfied customers are a joy to every business person. Watching the orders come in, or the product moving off the shelf, is the feedback you have been looking for.

This list (published on Techrunch earlier this week) shows the startups that Techcrunch readers care about the most, as measured by the number of them who signed up for email updates on Techcrunch articles about each company.

I see this list as a lead indicator of success for the companies listed – not a perfect one to be sure, but a good indicator none the less, and I like the fact it is data driven with no subjective element.