We are now coming towards the end of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010, and for the Business & IP Centre it has been a great success.
Each day we have been running informal half-day networking sessions. The Centre has been full of business experts and successful entrepreneurs advising aspiring entrepreneurs.
Our two special evening events, which I attended were also excellent.
On Tuesday our Creative Networking Evening provided an opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs and advisors.
Last night’s Question Time for Entrepreneurs offered inspiring speakers, including Deborah Meaden (Dragon’s Den), Brent Hoberman (lastminute.com and mydeco.com) and Cath Kidston.
There has been lots of twitter activity about us over the last few days, and Dan Martin’s live blog led to lots of other tweeters getting involved.
We’ve also had some nice comments about our events:
“Just got back from massively inspiring business mentoring workshop at the British Library as part of entrepreneur week. Fully pumped!”
“Enjoyed speed mentoring at Enterprise Week at British Library. Met several amazing creatives at the first steps of their business.”
“It was a great event! Interesting & challenging debate” (from Women Unlimited about Inspiring Entrepreneurs)
“Thanks for a great panel session. An interesting mix of views and media”
“Great line up for Question Time: Deborah Meaden +co-founder of Lastminute.com Brent Hoberman +Enterprise UKs CEO Tom Bewick.”
Perhaps I spent too many years working in the City of London working for unappreciative customers, so I am frequently surprised by how grateful many of our customers are for the help we give them in starting up their business. However, when I heard that Pervin Shaikh wanted to express her appreciation by giving us a copy of What Would Google Do, I was amazed.
Pervin explained that she thought the book would be helpful to aspiring (and existing) entrepreneurs.
Having speed read it this morning, before sending it off to be added to our collection, I agree with her.
The author Jeff Jarvis writes the new media column for the Guardian newspaper, as well as founder of Buzzmachine.com, one of the web’s most popular and respected blogs about the internet and media.
He starts the book by listing some of the new rules that Google used – to become successful, in what he calls the upside-down, inside-out, counter-intuitive and confusing world of the internet age:
1. Customers are now in charge. They can be heard around the globe and have an impact on huge institutions in an instant.
2. People can find each other anywhere and coalesce around you-or against you.
3. The mass market is dead, replaced by the mass of niches.
4. ‘Markets are conversations,” decreed The Cluetrain Manifesto, the seminal work of the internet age, in 2000. That means the key skill in any organization today is no longer marketing but conversing.
5. We have shifted from an economy based on scarcity to one based on abundance. The control of products or distribution will no longer guarantee a premium and a profit.
6. Enabling customers to collaborate with you-in creating, distributing, marketing, and supporting products-is what creates a premium in today’s market.
7. The most successful enterprises today are networks-which extract as little value as possible so they can grow as big as possible-and the platforms on which those networks are built.
8. Owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer the key to success. Openness is.
Google have been generous in sharing their philosophy on their website, so we can look there to see why they are the fastest growing company in the history of the world, according to the Times newspaper.
Our philosophy – Ten things we know to be true:
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well
3. Fast is better than slow
4. Democracy on the web works
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer
6. You can make money without doing evil
7. There’s always more information out there
8. The need for information crosses all borders
9. You can be serious without a suit
10. Great just isn’t good enough
Jarvis also looks at Facebook, and recounts listening to the 22 year old founder Mark Zuckerberg answer a gathering of media moguls at Davos on how to build their own communities – ‘you can’t’.
What he meant, was that communities already exist, so your role is to bring them ‘elegant organization’, to help them achieve their goals more effectively. Jarvis illustrates Zuckerberg’s approach by retelling the story of how he managed to graduate from Harvard, despite not having attended a single class or finding time to study.
‘The final exam was a week away and he was in a panic. It’s one thing to drop out of Harvard to start a gigantic, world-changing company; it’s another to flunk.
Zuckerberg did what comes naturally to a native of the web. He went to the internet and downloaded images of art he knew would be covered in the exam. He put them on a web page and added blank boxes under each. Then he emailed the address of this page to his class-mates, telling them he’d just put up a study guide. Think Tom Sawyer’s fence. The class dutifully came along and filled in the blanks with the essential knowledge about each piece of art, editing each other as they went, collaborating to get it just right. This being Harvard, they did a good job of it.
You can predict the punch line: Zuckerberg aced the exam. But here’s the real kicker: The professor said the class as a whole got better grades than usual. They captured the wisdom of their crowd and helped each other. Zuckerberg had created the means for the class to collaborate. He brought them elegant organization.’
Some of the other highlights of the book for me were:
• If you’re not searchable, you won’t be found – make sure you maximise your discovery, especially by Google search.
• Your customers are your ad agency – in the early days of Google, Facebook and Twitter, all their marketing work was done for free by their fans.
• The mass market is dead – long live the mass of niches – and the long tail.
• Middlemen are doomed – unless they can show how they add value.
• Life is beta – let your customers test and develop your products and services.
In the second part of the book, Jarvis applies the Google rules to a raft of traditional activities, from utilities to hospitals to banks. The results are fascinating and relevant for everyone in business. For example, why don’t supermarkets have forums where customers could ask for and vote on new product lines.
In conclusion, I would say this is a fascinating wide ranging and challenging review of how the Google approach to business can (and most likely will) impact how many business and service operations operate in future. And a ‘must read’ for anyone about to start out on their own business adventure.
“We wanted somewhere away from the ‘Buy this! Sell this!’ mentality”: Corinne Blum and Adrian Kowal, co-founders of Evolve Wellness Centre
The Evening Standard recently printed a fascinating story about increasing numbers of City workers who are abandoning their highly paid jobs to start alternative therapy businesses (Get well on the way to enlightenment).
I worked in the City for many years, and managed a colleague who went on to start his own business Sacred Moves in New Zealand, inspired by yoga and ecstatic dance. So I am intrigued by this seeming contradiction of ‘heartless’ business ethos and Zen like approaches to life.
We already see many clients in the Business & IP Centre who are starting complementary health or life coach related businesses, so it will be interesting to watch for an increase in those from a corporate background.
Extract from Get well on the way to enlightenment by Stephanie Theobald
Kowal, of English, American and Ukrainian descent, is one of a new breed of City types who have found corporate life too stifling and have dared to do something about it.
“I was surrounded by people with lots of money who didn’t have the contentment of knowing where to channel it,” he says, adding that his city pals are now starting to come to Evolve. “They start out sceptical and end up sheepish when they see how our treatments work.”
However, according to Alison Pothier, a former top-level investment banker for JP Morgan and UBS, there is still a stigma attached to appearing too “out there” in a City environment.
“A huge number of City people are into this stuff but they’re not out’ about it. I used to meet with colleagues behind closed doors for sessions.”
We have joined forces to develop a new online service for managers, bringing together the latest management research and business information, alongside the British Library’s vast collections of print and digital material.
Jude England, head of social science collections and research at the British Library, says: “Our joint aim is to develop joined-up information services and content. The partnership with CMI expresses our continued commitment to supporting the government’s vision of building Digital Britain and improving UK productivity.
We have created a video explaining the site on our YouTube channel.
Whether you’re a University researcher or a busy manager, this Portal will help you find and use high quality management research publications quickly and easily.
Download research reports, summaries, briefings, working papers, conference papers and articles from key publishers.
You must register (see button above) to see most of the content.
Discover the British Library’s vast print and digital collections – in one powerful search
Receive alerts about new content that matches your subject interest(s)
Watch author interviews and other videos
Disseminate and preserve your work
Contact us
The introduction of the portal is the second joint venture with CMI this year. The first was the CMI Management Book of the Year awards, which I blogged about last March (Who will win Management Book of Year?).
Fifteen of the UK’s best management authors are now one step closer to winning the coveted title of Management Book of the Year, having made it on to the competition shortlist.
The CMI Management Book of the Year competition, launched by the CMI (Chartered Management Institute) in association with the British Library, aims to uncover the UK’s best books on management and leadership and raise the profile of the great management writing published or distributed in the UK. The shortlisted books are those that, in the opinion of the panel of expert competition judges, will help transform the working practices of managers and help to raise awareness of how management theories and thinking can be better applied in practice.
With £5,000 at stake for the winning author, the shortlisted books, which include John Adair’s Leadership of Muhammad and Richard Donkin’s The Future of Work, will now undergo an intense review process, where expert judges will whittle down the entries to find the UK’s best management text. One winner will be chosen in each of the three categories – ‘Practical Manager’, ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Digital Management Book’ – before the overall winner is picked from the three.
The first competition of its kind, Management Book of the Year was created in response to shocking research that revealed that 85 per cent of employees would rather seek help elsewhere than turn to their managers when they need guidance at work. Despite this, just five per cent of these people are turning to management books when they have work issues, suggesting that managers are struggling to find useful, practical texts.
The research also revealed that surprisingly, when it comes to topic choice, more people would like to read about how to achieve a good work/life balance (40 per cent) than how to get a pay rise (30 per cent). In addition, 31 per cent are interested in advice on how to manage people, while just 19 per cent would like tips on securing a promotion.
The winning book will be announced on 25 January 2011.
The books that have made it onto the shortlist are as follows:
Practical Manager category:
Leadership of Muhammad by John Adair
ReWork: change the way you work forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Managing by Henry Mintzberg
The Intuitive Mind by Eugene Sadler-Smith
The World’s Business Cultures and how to unlock them by Barry Tomalin and Mike Nicks
Innovation & Entrepreneurship category:
Glimmer: How design can transform your business by Warren Berger
Brilliant Business Creativity by Richard Hall
Evolution: How to thrive in crazy times by Bill Lucas
Supercorp by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Design-Driven Innovation by Roberto Verganti
Digital Management Book category:
The Future of Work by Richard Donkin
The Leadership Illusion by T. Hall and K. Janman
Fast Track to Success: project management ebook by Patrick Harper-Smith
Paris Hilton: heiress, celebrity, porn star, entrepreneur and permanent resident of the brat pack. Love her or hate her, Paris Hilton is one of the most successful celebrity brands of the past decade. She may be famous only for being famous, but she has made some canny business decisions to market herself. In February 2007, the Associated Press tried to curb Hilton’s fame by refusing to report her name for a whole week. Needless to say, the experiment failed. Here’s what business owners can learn from Paris Hilton.
Once again EnterQuest have come up with a great angle on business start-up.
Although many business start-ups come from enforced redundancies or a choice to start afresh, the more cautious approach of starting with just a toe in the water is becoming increasingly popular.
I don’t think Chicken Entrepreneur is a particularly flattering name, for what can be the most sensible way to start a business, and one recommended by Jason Fried and David Hansson in Reworking, which I reviewed in A radical Reworking of business.
Chicken entrepreneurship
No, we’re not referring to the number of people taking up KFC franchises, or householders keeping poultry and selling the eggs.
We’re talking about people who start up a business but are too ‘chicken’ to give up their current employment. They’re being entrepreneurial because they have a reasonably firm idea or vision for their little venture, but are afraid to risk everything by going the whole hog and quitting work completely, not for a while anyway.
These are ‘spare-time’ start ups and side-businesses, and are very often second, third or even fourth-income enterprises whose objective is simply to make ends meet and pay the bills.
And there are a heck of a lot of people doing this.
Last week I attending an absolutely fascinating workshop on future trends in retailing.
Cate Trotter the founder and Head of Trends at Insider Trends was the speaker, and had an impressive knowledge of the key issues affecting on-line and off-line retail business.
Here are my notes from the information packed two hour session:
What are the main trends that will affect retailers over next two to five years?
Why?
Trends are like ocean tides an cannot be controlled, but if you recognise them you can ride them to success.
Who?
There is now a more sophisticated and more connected customer base than ever before.
Segmentation for individuals – more tailored products and stores
Examples:
* Alton Towers’ Sleepover Suite (sponsored by Superdrug) for teenage girls
* Blends for Friends – an online tailored tea store – unique flavours and labels
* Elemis Skinlab – technology to assess skin leading to tailored products
Co-creation such as product modification.
Examples:
* Nokia phone covers – an early example
* Nike iD range of shoes (choose from 60 shoes and select design of each element) – not a new service, but sales up 20% in last year
* Zazzle – uploaded designs printed on thousands of different products – recent sales surge
* Chocri.co.uk and Chocomize.com
Concept development and product development
Examples:
* BMW – asking for ideas for new cars with online voting for favourites
* Denham – store designed around what the customer wants
Use SurveyMonkey – to find out what your customers want, or how about a coffee morning discussion. Much more than just a focus group asking for opinions.
Changing family structure leads to convenience trend
– more singles than married in the UK by 2020
– more single person households in the UK – impacts how people shop – from weekly shop to convenience shopping. Growth from 19bn 2000 to 41bn 2015
– Asda have bough Netto
– Easier payment – Visa PayWave system
– Debenhams – mini-wok is most popular item
– Dinner for one packages
– Waitrose – small stores with fresh food, warm bread, deli
– Reprise of the milkman – milkandmore.co.uk – findmeamilkman.net
What?
Two types of retail – Online vs Offline
Online
– strong advantages
– price and value
– convenience – to your door
Offline
– needs to compete with online success by expanding on…
– experience
– relationships
Don’t get caught in the middle – if you are on the high street, don’t try and compete on price or you will fail
Online Retail
– Moving onto portable devices and digital television
– Growing at 20% a year – more people online – more confidence shopping online
– Brand loyalty reducing online – one click away from a competitor + price comparison engines
– Small business shouldn’t not be drawn into price competition – e.g. with Amazon
– Make shopping easier for your customers – one click shopping – PayPal – clickandbuy.com and buxter.com (for Facebook shopping).
– Move to ‘right first time’ e.g. Levis curve fit
– Problem of home delivery – 10% of deliveries fail first time
– Example of collectplus.com can deliver to home or to a local store (later hours than local Post Office). Makes returns easy with label and convenience store, with post paid if wanted.
The more unique your business the more loyalty you will get from your customers.
Examples:
– Trunkclub.com online personal shopper who makes a commission on clothes bought.
– Plan B Salon – Skype interviewing
– Tissot.ch/reality – create a paper watch which generates facsimile of their designs.
Tissot.ch/reality
– Neuvomonde.com – watches on your wrist
– Supermarketsarah.com – Portobello Road market in her house – a new photo each week. Also collaborates with designers
Growth of mobile retailing
– Expected to double in next four years, but is still a tiny fraction of sales
– Will use phones to find out about products so website must include phone capability
– Phone apps will grow, but might be out of the reach of small business.
Offline Retail
Examples:
– Abercrombie and Fitch – more of an experience than shopping – all five sense are covered – loud music – A&F scents –
– The Brand Showroom – e.g. Disney Stores – putting the experience before the product
– J Crew (share of life retailing) – a range of products for a particular segment of the market / customer
– Monocle Stores – London, New York, Tokyo, Zurich – sell their magazine plus accessories for readers of the mag
– Mellow Johnny’s in Texas – bicycles, café and related
– Lomography Gallery, London – retail and support services
Lomography Gallery London
Competition now comes from other experiences instead of other retailers
e.g. kids, shopping, theme parks
ROBO shopping – Research Offline – Buy Online
Maximise sales by
– selling closer to the time of need – rollasole.co.uk
– selling closer to time of consumption
– exclusives
– charge for stocking goods – ladenshowroom.co.uk in the East End
– own label products – e.g. Apple – use stores to promote products – don’t mind if customers buy online
– Own label – houseoffrasser.co.uk – Dyson have tried a pop-up store
Where?
13% of stores are now empty – lower rate in the South East
Increasing demand for accessible / high street stores
People losing trust in big name brands – moving to local stores and farmer’s markets
Authenticity and localness – you don’t want to be located in a mall
Choose you neighbours carefully – think about pairing up with a like minded business.
Example of A Gold (UK produce) and Verde’s (European produce) in Brushfield street in Spitalfields.
Attention spans on the web are shortening over time.
Store payback time 5-7 years on average
Example wesc.com – using trolleys to keep store fresh
Amorepacific.com use projected displays in store – others use LCD displays
Liberty change signage fonts and colours
Could use posters
Fast moving stock – Zara has 11,000 new products a year
Temporary retail spaces – pop-up-stores – now hitting the mainstream
Toys R Us open up 200 pop-up-stores for seasonal sales
The Secret Restaurant and now The Secret Market (food fair) – marmitelover.blogspot.com
Retail trucks – Adidas pop-up truck – can use Twitter to announce where you are
New mobile app and widget to take credit card payments – squareup.com – 3% charge
How? (including marketing)
Less brand loyalty than in the past
Customers more inclined to listen to each other than conventional advertising
Haulvideos.net – people buy goods and post comments online – leads to discussion
High satisfaction leads to word of mouth and social media
So concentrate on quality delivery rather than low price
Happy customer vs unhappy customer – £600 vs -£400 – Research by a mobile phone company
Nudging customers to promote your products or services
Example:
Shopkick.com - customers get points for registering in store
Foursquare.com and gowalla.com – social media element
– Be interesting – sketch.uk.com
– Tell stories – your customer might want to share – hubbards.co.nz newsletter in every pack
– Educate customers – Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle – sealed chambers
Apple store free workshops
– Make business more interactive – made.com – furniture designed by members of the public with votes to decide
– 4food.com in New York, customers design their own burgers online and save recipe, with 25cents for each one sold
– Swipely.com – records purchases and shares online
– Uniqlo’s Lucky Line for every 26th customer who joined the line – massive social media coverage
Conclusion
Growth rates predicted for next 18 months
Offline 1% – existing £263bn
Online 39% – existing £11bn
The future is customer centric so think P2P Retail – human interactions
– Be human!
– Celebrate your smallness
– Who is your service going to be tailored to?
– What do they like?
– How will you adapt to them?
– How will they change and how will you move with them.
– Be authentic – with innovations which will benefit your customers – connect with your local community
– Be conversational – put the relationship before the sale
– Finding out what your customers think and how to trigger them to promote you.
They now have so much useful information on their website that the list below is full of links to their own pages. Which reminds me of their gallery of 500+ business plans sourced from Business Plan Pro.
It must qualify as the ultimate to-do list for starting up a business.
What kind of business should I start?
There are loads of options out there for all of you who want to become self-employed. Click on the links below to explore each.
Is your idea viable? You need to do a rough working of your costs versus the money you can make from sales. How much will people pay for your product? Use this guide for more info and ask people who will give you an honest opinion.
Find at least three unique selling points (USPs). If you can’t, think of a new business idea, because you won’t be able to lure customers away from your already-established competition. This feature will help you determine USPs.
Do some preliminary research into suppliers and distributors – a bit of Googling, a few casual phonecalls to potential suppliers, and ask other businesses in your sector – so you know how easy it is to get the materials and products you need and how much those items will cost.
Find out what price people will pay for your product and what your business model will be. Do market research and use this advice section.
Try making a few sales if you can via eBay or however you can – just a bit of testing to see how the market responds. Follow up on other ways to test your market.
Writing a business plan
Writing a business plan might seem like a long and boring task, but it forces you to think about your idea rigorously, highlights potential show-stopping problems and makes you take a hard look at how much money you’re going to need. Use our 500+ free business plan templates for guidance.
Decide where your business will be based – start at home if you can (here’s why). If you need commercial premises, look at this advice section and research property prices in your area to include an approximate cost in your budget. Factor in business rates and utility bills.
Write your business plan.
Some details will need to be updated as you complete the next few steps – or you might need to complete the next few steps before finishing your business plan. That’s fine – a business plan should be a live document, updated regularly.
Once you’ve done your business plan, make a project plan what you need to achieve by which (target) dates to get you through the next steps. This is an absolute must!
How can I finance my business?
Work out what savings, income and solutions like remortgages you can use to finance your business. Warning: do not put all your eggs in this one basket. Five in six businesses fail in their first year – we don’t want to be pessimistic, but we also don’t want you to end up homeless if this doesn’t work out.
Read our section on business finance to look at all the options available to you.
Talk to your bank manager, business plan in hand, to find out what kind of loan you will be able to access. Make it clear you’re still pre-start-up and just doing research at this stage. Watch this video for advice on what the banks are looking for. Watch this video on the EFG to see if you’re eligible for that too.
Assess your skills set and start thinking about what other help you will need. Bring in a business partner if needed and talk to people or businesses you will need to outsource to. Warning: don’t start employing people until you really, really need to. You need to keep costs as low as possible. If you definitely need employees, check out this advice section.
Make sure you have the support of family and friends. You’ll need it.
Find out about what business rates (on premises) and taxes you need to deal with.
Find out what regulations and restrictions you might face, and any licenses you need to obtain before you can start trading. Talk to your local council to find out.
Have your books set up and know who will manage them. Crucial note: you need to be able to understand them even if an accountant is doing most of the work. Check out our advice sections on money management and bookkeeping for help.
Network like crazy to tell people about your business!
As a regular customer at their Oxford Street store for many years (even including hosting my wedding list way back when I was young), I can personally confirm the high level of customer service they deliver.
Already this year, it has won the Which? Best Online Retailer 2010 and been voted Britain’s Favourite Retailer 2010.
Our partner Smarta.com has written an excellent article which explains their approach and gives tips for the rest of us to follow.
1. Make staff care about customer service
None of the 70,000 people who work at John Lewis is an employee – they’re all ‘partners‘, who jointly own the business. (It’s officially called the John Lewis Partnership.) They get a profit share based on how much profit is generated by the business as a whole, so they all feel really involved and really incentivised.
This encourages them to give dazzling service because they feel such a sense of ownership for the business. The documentary had no shortage of beaming employees extolling John Lewis’s virtues and radiating pride. The partnership scheme makes them feel valued, which makes them happy. And happy staff equal good staff. As executive chairman Charlie Mayfield puts it: “We’re based on the notion that if we treat our partners well, it will lead to good customer service.” Hear, hear.
Follow John Lewis’s example by: giving your staff shares or tying bonuses to the achievement of the whole business to make them proud of where they work, and happy to work hard for it.
2. Teach protocol – but empower staff to make decisions themselves
New members of staff at John Lewis are sent on mass customer service training days before their first day. After that, there’s ongoing training for employees to make sure everyone’s giving the same brilliant service. Want the short-cut to all that insight? Mark the words of the chirpy new recruit trainer who sums up John’s six founding principles of customer service thus: “Be honest; give respect; recognise others; show enterprise; work together; achieve more.”
The ‘showing enterprise’ point is interesting, because it’s not all about playing by the rule book. Partners are encouraged to make customer service decisions themselves on-the-spot. This means that that most despicable of retail irks – having to wait for ages while the person you’ve complained to fetches their manager – is neatly avoided.
Allowing employees to think for themselves also gives them a sense of responsibility – which, as a rule of thumb, they tend to want to live up to.
Follow John Lewis’s example by: teaching staff how to deal with queries and complaints, then stepping back and letting them make decisions for themselves wherever possible. Also, invest in proper training for your people and don’t be shy about sharing your vision and expectations.
3. Make sure front-line staff feedback on what customers want
Victoria Simpson, development manager for customer service at John Lewis, recommends talking to customer-facing staff regularly and getting them involved in improving the way things are done. “They have insights no one else can form.” Partners ask customers what they want and what they think, and record results. Then, they act on it. “It’s tempting to feel that once the information has been gathered, the job is done,” Simpson says. “But your processes and culture need to be altered as a result.”
Follow John Lewis’s example by: getting customer-facing staff to find out what customers are feeling, then using results to improve your service.
4. Be exceptional
Every now and then, some rare occurrence happens that lets a business take one of two paths: be ordinary, or be extraordinary. When a deluge of snow blanketed the country in December 2009, a certain John Lewis in Buckinghamshire realised that closing its doors as normal and sending customers into the blizzard would be callous. Instead, it decided to host an impromptu mass sleepover. It made up its beds and let more than 100 people stay the night, laying on food for everyone and opening up toys for the kids to play with.
Now, opportunities like this don’t come along all the time. But because of lesson number two, the John Lewis partners could decide for themselves to make the most of happenstance. And they got a good PR kick out of it too (check out this video from the BBC) – not to mention a lot of happy customers to spread the word in their community.
That’s not to say you can’t be exceptional day-to-day. The expertise of John Lewis’s in-store staff is one of the business’ strongest selling points. “If you don’t know your stuff,” one partner confides in the documentary, “the customers can see straight through it.” These partners are the walking talking encyclopaedias of their niches – and that fosters a sense of authority and trustworthiness that customers can’t resist.
Follow John Lewis’s example by: making sure your team know your products inside-out and embracing every opportunity you can to bend over backwards for customers.
5. Maintain customer service levels online
Selling online isn’t an excuse to let standards slip. Quite the opposite. It’s much more difficult to retain any of the personal touch of offline service, so you need to work even harder to make sure online customers still feel listened to.
John Lewis has an impressive and user-friendly website, sure. But more importantly, it makes sure its customers can contact a real person as soon as they want to. It offers phone numbers and the names and addresses of its customer service manager and head of online selling.
It also works hard to make sure online customers don’t feel short-changed. “The crucial part of service online is the last mile,” MD Andy Street explains in the documentary. “We have to bring the service into online.” He does this by making delivery options perfectly tailored to customers’ wants and by making sure the standards of expertise are carried through onto the website. So the site has loads of handy podcasts and advice guides.
Follow John Lewis’s example by: making sure that when customers shop online they feel they have a real person on-hand to help if needed, and that your brand values are carried over onto your website
I have finally got around to ‘reading’ Startup TV magazine, which is now up to its tenth edition. It is a very modern combination of a digital magazine with videos embedded on each page.
In this issue they include an interview with Richard Reed of Innocent smoothies fame. He talks about his ‘Trojan horses’ to get healthy food (fruit and vegetables) into adults and children.
There is a set of number-one-tips from a range of successful entrepreneurs, which includes ‘be yourself, be the best you can be’.
Penny Power the creator of Ecademy talks about social media and building trust online.
And Claire Young discusses life after the Apprentice and her new project to help young girls in the UK.
Girls Out Loud is a UK based social enterprise set up in 2009 by serial entrepreneur and inspirational speaker/coach Jane Kenyon and business woman, Ambassador for enterprise and media personality Claire Young – with the aim to raise the aspirations of young girls between the ages of 13-18. Girls Out Loud facilitates intervention programmes in schools from one day to 3 months in duration.
We are now coming towards the end of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010, and for the Business & IP Centre it has been a great success.
Smarta
Today seems to be the day for checklists. First there was 
What kind of business should I start?
