Welcome to Carnival of Entrepreneurship Edition Two


Carnival of EntrepreneurshipWelcome to the Second Edition of Carnival of Entrepreneurship. Like other blog Carnivals, it is a weekly round-up of intriguing blog posts. Carnivals offer you, the reader, a way to discover new blogs and what people are thinking about.

Carnival of Entrepreneurship is limited to seven posts. As host, that made my job tough. There were far more than seven entries, all of them quality. Whenever possible I gave preference to entries from newer blogs and bloggers I do not know as well, because I am always glad to see new faces. (All my blogging friends know I love you already, anyway!) If you did not make it into this week’s edition, please keep trying. Remember the first secret to success as an entrepreneur: persistence.

With that said, here are the seven posts for the Second Edition of Carnival of Entrepreneurship:

  • Ryan Williams of Web Things Considered (and a principal in Web development firm Fourio) writes about the Web 2.0 Innovation Map he developed. Using the Google Maps and Yahoo geocoding tools, he put together a map showing the location of 200 companies with Web 2.0 software applications or sites. It’s well done, and fascinating to navigate through. Try it out, and see what Web 2.0 businesses are located in your area.A side benefit is that Ryan lists the blog posts from which he culled the Web 2.0 applications. Check out the blog posts listed on the lower right side of the map page. They are interesting reading in their own right. Hint: someone needs to write a blog post adding all the Web 2.0 applications that are NOT on any existing lists, and send the link to Ryan to include in the map.
  • Carson V. Conant, Editor of AdvantEdge magazine, writes a thought-provoking post asking “Is Invention Dead?” He wonders aloud whether modern technology has gotten so complex that individual entrepreneurs can no longer invent anything, because they do not have the sophisticated equipment necessary. Will we never again have another Thomas Edison?He raises an interesting point. Of course, I wonder how many supergeeks are holed up in their basements right now working on some crude version of what will become the next invention to shape mankind’s future. Assuming that specialized equipment is necessary in order to create a truly great invention perhaps is thinking too inside the box.
  • David Terrar at Business Two Zero provides his list of seven important business books, each with a short, single-paragraph review. You’ll find many classics among this list.It surprises me that more bloggers don’t do book reviews like this. Oh, I regularly see little automated lists of books on blog sidebars. But a simple link to a book with the image of the book cover, does little to get me to want to click on it. Now, if the blogger writes a couple of sentences about the value he or she got out of a book, then I am more likely to investigate it further. Maybe even buy it.
  • Business writer and speaker Rick Spence outlines ten steps to a business turn around. They are extracted from a recent conference at the University of Toronto.You will probably read the post and say, “this is basic stuff.” But that does not minimize the significance of the steps. It’s not necessarily that we don’t know the basics. We just get weighed down with the accumulated pressures of conducting our businesses — more so when the business is in trouble or facing unprecedented challenges. Sometimes we need to look up and remind ourselves of the steps to find solutions to our business problems.
  • Barry Welford writes at the Other Bloke’s Blog about the new field of neurofinance, which suggests that the same brain functions that govern pleasures such as sex, also govern our desire for money. Rather than making rational decisions about money, we let our senses and desires override reason. Why else do people go wild at the idea of Google stock at $450? He says to look forward someday to a Nobel Prize mentioning the word “lust” in a citation for a Nobel Economics Prize.I consider this scientific confirmation of something most people have observed already. Day trading, gambling addictions, get-rich-quick schemes that defy logic and common sense — how else do you explain them?
  • Jeffrey Osborne at the New Improved Plan Resonate blog, writes about something he calls “emergent tactics.” These are the actions that small businesses use and learn from, often through trial and error or just plain luck. He offers six steps for learning from your successes and failures so that you can make more intelligent business decisions in the future.This is good stuff. We all know the best way to learn is through actual experience. We make mistakes, and hopefully we learn. It’s the “hopefully” part that Jeffrey offers a methodology for.
  • Stephen Nipper at The Invent Blog lays out five things he would do differently if he started blogging today. He writes, “I started blogging here in January of 2004. I didn’t have a book guiding me. *** Sadly, my blog is screwed up. It really is.”Well, Stephen, I would not be so hard on yourself. I don’t think your blog is screwed up. But I do think the advice you give is solid, and I would recommend newbie bloggers consider it — and save themselves headaches later on.

* * * * *

Thank you for joining us. For more information, including a list of upcoming hosts and instructions for how to submit your entry, please visit the Carnival of Entrepreneurship home page.

16 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

16 Reactions
  1. Great reviews Anita. It’s always good to read some content produced by “up and comers” in the blog world. I think you’ll find some more great blog candidates for Carnival of Entrepreneurship on the Go BIG Network (http://www.gobignetwork.com).

  2. It’s great to see this new addition to the Carnival scene, Anita. Insightful reviews such as you produced make the Carnival of Entrepreneurship stand out from the crowd. Congratulations and thanks for the mention.

  3. Thanks, Ryan. Make sure posts from GoBig Network are entered into the next edition of Carnival of Entrepreneurship. The more posts submitted, the better!

  4. Thanks, Barry, and thank YOU for your insightful posts. In the final analysis, these Carnivals are all about the fine bloggers who submit their posts.

  5. Hi Anita – I was just reading Carnival 3 at Working Solo when it dawned on me I had been impolite and forgotten to thank you for including my Recommended Reading list, and for the excellent job you did of hosting number 2. You are so right with your book reviews comment, I wonder why more bloggers don’t do it, and the rest of your editorial was great. Thanks!