Hawai’i’s Economy

Mahalo to everyone who joined us at our first Club gathering, featuring Mr. Paul Brewbaker from BOH. Everyone found the information and discussions fascinating!

Mr. Brewbaker asked me to share this “Hawai’i at a Glance” document with the attendees. It is a short 2-pager, a little dated, but hitting the kind of high points people were interested in.

Small Business Confidence

BusinessWeek was commissioned by CapitalOne to research US small business confidence.  This is one of the white papers, produced in October 2007.  The site, the Small Business Confidence Forum, also has podcasts and other info.

Anyone know of any Hawaii small business confidence studies or statistics?

Internet…Key to Globalization

For a couple days I`ve been looking all over the web trying to figure out what I wanted to put in my first blog.  I finally found it!!! BusinessWeek put out an article about a 19 year old college student in Pakistan starting an internet-based business. 

 What struck me about this article is that younger entrepreneurs in what we consider third world countries are on the rise because of the access and capabilities of the internet.  So I got to thinking…the internet is where we need to take our businesses and business ideas. 

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jan2008/sb20080123_487864.htm?chan=search

Peer-to-Peer Lending

Kiva.org is an example of using contemporary technology to enable new relationships and networks, in this case creating a prominent example of peer-to-peer lending to connect entrepreneurs with regular individuals who are interested in supporting such efforts. It really is time for Hawaiian businesses and programs to start going farther afield to find inspiration for innovation and development. See also Farsight for more business-related futures scanning hits.

Arts and Crafts Online

This recent BusinessWeek article discusses some of the recent developments on- and off-line in the already well-established arts and crafts world across the US and Europe.  New communities of do-it-yourself (DIY) arts & crafts, many of them under 30, are benefiting from concepts like open-source ideology and new web-enabled services to share know-how and sell their creations on global sites.

Certainly for Hawaiian communities, within which small arts & crafts (A&C) side business are common, such new communities and services should be looked at as possible ways to grow what might just be a small endeavor into a real-income generating venture with global reach.

Building Better Boards

I came across this article on BusinessWeek and thought it would be good to share.  It’s stuff that most of us already know, but how you structure meetings as well as the information that is brought into it can be hugely critical to how well the meeting, especially executive and strategic-level meetings perform.  This is often an area that I end up working with clients on.

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