Always the notorious red-light district of sports, boxing today is as troubled as it was even in the days when the Mob called the shots. There are too many lawsuits and too few heroes. Absurd mismatches and fraudulent rankings by unaccountable offshore sanctioning bodies have disgusted fans.
Tahl Raz
Drilling is risky because finding oil is only half the job. The real challenge is finding the money to pump the oil.
Pure art is a noble pursuit. Applied art is a business. That's one reason design firms have been so eager of late to add consulting and manufacturing to their core aesthetic competencies.
Edible Arrangements will have to beat back some rivals, including a handful of mom-and-pop vendors and a company in Pennsylvania called Incredibly Edible Delites. And there's always the chance that a deep-pocketed national florist like FTD will decide that pretty produce is profitable and jump into the mix.
Anyone can call himself a promoter. Anyone can call himself a promoter and stage a fight. Unlike other professional sports, whose owners collude out of mutual interest in their sport's image and general welfare, there are no real alliances or partnerships in boxing.
Since its founding, Brooks Instrument has been producing devices that measure and control the flow rate of fluids used in manufacturing processes. And for all those years, the company has relied on the standard marketing package for its sector: earnest, information-crammed manuals and brochures.
Oil wells never really run dry. A big company will drain maybe 40% of a field. Pulling out the rest of the oil, which requires an outlay of incrementally more cash per barrel, often proves uneconomical for big companies with big overheads.
Networking is never easier than when people are coming to you.
Schmoozers are brownnosers, sycophants more suited to middle management than to the Wild West of the entrepreneurial world.
Design firms and progressive companies rely on many of the same tools: rapid prototyping, observational research, creative thinking, collaborative work environments, and multidisciplinary teams.
A company logo may be the last thing cost-conscious CEOs focus on when they're looking to jump-start growth. Which is perhaps why it took more than two decades for White Mountain Footwear, a privately held shoe manufacturer based in Lisbon, N.H., to finally give its own emblem some serious thought.
No sport - maybe no business - is more entrepreneurial than boxing.
'Independents' - the industry term for companies that have more capital and know-how than the typical 'wildcatter' - can grow either by exploring and finding reserves or by buying a company that already has them.
ReadyMade's first three issues dished out instructions for all sorts of kitschy crafts and odd projects: homemade wallets, Adirondack chairs, even taxidermy.
The process of unleashing worms on organic waste such as food scraps and grass clippings is known as 'vermicomposting.' Amateur horticulturists and hippies have been doing it on a small scale for decades.
While professional basketball, football, and baseball players make millions and their salaries represent well over 50% of the billions generated by those sports, the spoils of boxing don't often make it to the boxers.
Spirituality is a growth industry. And nothing illustrates that better than the burgeoning crop of colossal sanctuaries sprouting up in suburbs across the land.
Sell your intellectual property based on a track record of success and innovation.
Would it be a surprise if entrepreneurs recoil at the thought of consciously courting any person who has more power and money than they have?
The role of president, as George W. Bush commented in 2000, requires vision, management, and an eye for talent - not so different from that of CEO. But during the first years of Carter's presidency, his Cabinet was anything but businesslike, beset by infighting and meetings that ambled.
Companies that have strong graphic identities have built them through years of use.
There is constant talk about the intermarriage crisis: who is a Jew and how we define a Jew. That doesn't go over well with young Jews trying to figure out whether they want to be a part of this thing or not.
Slick marketing, high-tech production values, and a practical message have created a product that plays well to today's fickle churchgoer. Megachurches - defined as congregations with more than 2,000 members - number close to 600 in the United States.
Some of the best logos are the simplest. One of the oldest is the mark used by the Bass brewery: a red triangle. Target has made a red circle with a red dot in the middle seem the very essence of affordable, hip practicality.
There is a huge opportunity in the intermarriage trend. These are people who, if you show them how vital the community is and how great it is to raise kids Jewish, these people are going to raise their kids Jewish. Ultimately, that's all that matters.
When the founder of World Energy Solutions Inc. assembled his first board in 2000, it consisted of nine investors and friends. The group met quarterly, generally affirming Domaleski's every action. But the Worcester, Mass., company, which auctions electricity and gas credits, lacked customers and financing. It needed more from its board to survive.
Quality that significantly exceeds the customer's expectations doesn't seem to pay off. This 'delight the customer' stuff isn't rewarding. One has to be careful about delighting customers too often, because it sort of reshapes customer expectations.
A company's logo can be a visual ambassador, one that goes on everything from business cards to delivery trucks. When used effectively, it can be the window into the soul of a brand.
Take information technology. We have winners implementing CRM (customer relationship management systems) and losers implementing CRM. What mattered in technology is that the technology actually drives either cost reduction or superior strategy execution.
When designing your product, go beyond consumers' current knowledge base. Design, test, and dig deeper than almost any client would pay you to do.
Customers are enormously punishing when companies don't meet their expectations.
If you solve both the consumer problems and the corporate problems, you can win at this game. If you reinvent what a corporation is currently selling, it can often make the leap.
One of the first acts during the second coming of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1997 was a major board overhaul.
Fred Segal was founded - by none other than Fred Segal - as a tiny jeans retailer in 1968. In the 1970s Segal, began selling space to employees, starting with his nephew Ron Herman.
At Nike, designers both created and communicated the brand, transforming a company that made shoes into a purveyor of athletic heroism.
Design is the Zeppo Marx of management disciplines - the one that everyone seems to forget.
