Small Business Labs

MARCH 13, 2012

One of our Top 10 Small Business Trends for 2012 is Loyalty Meets Daily Deals, which we describe as: We think 2012 will see daily deals morph beyond shotgun-style attempts to bring in new business to more targeted methods and systems designed to attract, retain and reward loyal customers. The startup Womply is an example of this shift.  The company’s Loyalty Cloud product provides a simple way for merchants to reward loyal customer.  It's very straight forward: Merchants decide o

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 12, 2012

During Apple's recent iPad announcement CEO Tim Cook made several references to the "post-PC era" This led to a flurry of articles on the topic. At the simplest level, the post-PC era refers to the growth of computing devices that are not traditional PCs.  More specifically, the current use of the term refers to the growth of smartphones and tablets.      The term and concepts date back at least to the late 1990s when discussions of computer and Internet

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 7, 2012

Good article in Strategy and Business on 5 Millennial Myths.  According to research by the authors, "stereotypes of millennials in the workplace are inconsistent at best and destructive at worst" Instead of the common view that Milennials (also called Gen Y, born roughly 1980 - 2000) are needy, lazy and not committed, the article argues that in terms of work Millennials are not that different than older Gen Xers and baby boomers.

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 6, 2012

We've long followed the trends toward connected cars.  Back in 2007 we discussed the growing role cars would play as mobile offices in the Intuit Future of Small Business report The Connected World of Entrepreneurs.   Fast forward to today and telematics - the auto industry's term for car-based computing services and Internet access - has become a booming sector.  For example, Intel just announced a $100 million connected car venture fund.  The goal is to�

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 5, 2012

Writers and other artists have long joined together to form coworking spaces, although they rarely call them that.  They usually call them clubs or salons.  San Francisco's Writers Grotto  considers itself a club. But their description of their facility is very coworking like: Since 1994, the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto has pioneered a unique concept: an office for the creative, self-employed people who by definition don’t need to punch a clock.

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 1, 2012

Nielsen's State of the Media: U.S. Digital Consumer Report, Q3-Q4 2011 (free, registration required) describes in detailed the digital connectedness of Gen Y, which they describe as 18-34 year olds. None of the data is surprising - everyone knows Gen Y is a wired generation.  But it's very useful to see hard data supporting this.  Key quote from their blog post on the report : The latest Census reports that Americans 18-34 make up 23 percent of the U.S. population, yet they r

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 15, 2012

Excellent article from the Hartbeat Newsletter on the rapidly changing American family.  According to the article, the quick summary is: the iconic nuclear family of the 1950s is kaput. They go to say there "really is no more a generalizable American family" and American families are effectively as diverse as America is.   The shifting American family is comprised of a series of inter-related trends that are powerful in their own right.  These include: Growing num

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 28, 2012

Even if you've been living in a cave the last year or so you've probably still heard of Pinterest.  As the chart below from Comscore shows, it's the fastest growing social networking site of all time.         If by some chance you haven't heard of it, the site allows users to post, organize and share pictures of things they are interested in.  Think of it as an online, photo-sharing pinboard of interesting pictures - hence the name. 

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