The current economic situation is a massive playground for new companies, and history has shown us that there is no better time than a crisis, to start something new.

Maybe you have thought about some great idea, you started writing your business plan, but you still haven’t figured out how to form the ideal team. Maybe you thought about doing it with a friend, a former buddy from university, work, or maybe something else? It might sound like a good idea, but your best friend is not always going to be the best partner, when working with new ventures.

Recently Joey Flores, EVP of Sales and Marketing at startuparmy.com wrote a great blog about how to pick the right team. He highlighted how synergy is very important but also talks about trust as being an extremely important factor.

Read the full blog post by following the link here

Personal branding can take you far, and it’s not about being ’slick’ or kissing ass in your organization. Instead it’s a way to leverage yourself, make sure you get credit for what you deserve and finally to improve yourself and manage other people’s perceptions.

Leadership consultant Vicky Gordon recently posted an interesting take on the topic on her blog at Harvard Business Review. Basically she divides the ‘invisible resume’ into these five points:

-Find out what’s on your invisible resume

-Ask your manager for substantive feedback beyond perfunctory annual performance reviews

-Begin to rewrite the story

-Establish channels for ongoing feedback

-Periodic self-assessment

As you might have noticed reading the bullet points, the invisible resume is about perception - what people think about you and your actions. You might not have thought about this before, but other people’s perceptions are crucial for your success as you need support to make it to the top. If people don’t like you, don’t think you’re doing a great job, or simply don’t know what you’re doing, you might be losing an important piece in managing and leveraging your appearance.

This is why it’s important to know what’s on the invisible resume. Conduct a 360 degree feedback with peers and other colleagues. Figure out what they think about you and ask for suggestions for improvement. Don’t be offended if they write something you might not like - remember you asked them for it! Try to be objective and use the information to improve. From this point you can start to plan for improvement. Think about things that you might see repeatedly in the feedback and think about what you can do to improve. If necessary, make a plan for how to act, how to schedule your time, according to the suggested improvements.

This way you will start to re-write the story and use on-going feedback to keep improving, stay informed about other people’s perceptions, and this way you are on your way to a better personal brand and a improved ‘invisible resume’.

Read Vicky Gordon’s full blog post here

We all remember early 2000 when the famous ‘Internet Bubble’ burst and loads of dollars were lost. It was like a hot air balloon just waiting to pop as investors were throwing money at anything that had a high burn-rate (refers to how fast you spend money - a term very used during that period). I remember hearing stories about entrepreneurs who received venture capital funding by just showing a powerpoint presentation (might be a myth, but it reflects the eager to invest very well), even without having a solid business plan to back this up. 

Today the markets are down again after topping high levels only some years ago. This could be seen as another bubble (which I will not talk discuss in detail), but what is interesting are the new IT companies that we are seeing these days. Google made it as a the most known IT startup over the last decade, and this company is highly profitable, even though suffering a bit in some of their sources of income. On the other hand we have the new IT startups who are also basing their incomes on giving away services for free. These so-called Freemium companies base their business plan on a small paying subscriber base, who should be willing to pay for a premium service. This is what is offered by companies like Flickr, even though most of these yet have to show positive numbers on the cash flow statement.

At first sight these companies might seem similar to the ones who eventually made the bubble burst some 9 years ago. But I do think that they are different as the companies are based on a model that has been proven successful (just see the before mentioned Google) and do have a upside potential. We are not only evaluating how much money they ‘burn’ away per day, but actually investors are understanding the new economics, and the power of marketing a free product.

Recently I read an interesting article on a startup called Evernote. The company promises to keep track on your data using new technology that works with most handheld devices. With just the click of a photo you can store any data and this information is searchable (I see a great potential for grabbing business card information and accessing it in an easy way, just to mention one). Their marketing seems to be based on giving away the product for free, but they do generate some income through the users willing to pay a little extra for more storage space and advanced functions.

The freemium model is interesting and has a lot of potential if used with great creativity and caution. Companies can market themselves at low cost and generate a huge ‘word-of-mouth’ effect which has been the case for many of these startups.

The business landscape is changing and you can’t afford to ignore all these new tendencies. I don’t predict a new Internet bubble, but a promising future with new and more innovative business models.

To read more about Evernote and their Freemium model, click here

Even words can be bad, and according to a new study published in Journal of Management Studies, employees that have had bad ‘verbal experiences’ with their boss don’t forget about it again. It’s simply something that is hard to forget and it hurts morale as well as performance.

According to the study lead by Michael S. Cole from the Texas Christian University, bad comments about food habits, clothing or other personal habits can hurt the company’s stability in the long term. It happens when employees feel hurt or simply treated unfairly. The team discovered that these episodes can create stress among employees, and potentially a bad psychological condition as well as a condition of being emotionally sensitive. These last factors can have a really negative effect on the employees ways of handling situations and tasks at the workplace and that’s why it’s extremely important to avoid.

As a final effect, employees can lose the feeling of being part of the company and they might stop liking what they do. This leads to a higher percentage of people leaving and therefore more change in the staff which can also harm the company directly.

As the final advice; think about what is being said and how it might be perceived by the counterpart. Sometimes even jokes can be taken in a bad way and create this and it’s of keen importance to master emotional intelligence and know what to say and what no to.

According to the producers behind the ‘Social Media Revolution’ clip that’s spreading fast on YouTube, social media is the new big thing and boy are they on to something here.

Social media has spread like a wildfire and the number of users worldwide, and the daily usage is amazing. From Asia to Greenland, users are sharing content and interacting as never before and this is changing the global landscape completely. Some years back ‘globalization’ was the big buzzword, and social media have just given globalization a bigger push forward, making the distances between people, countries and regions even smaller.

We are looking at one of the biggest changes in never time and companies are fighting to get their share of the pie and try to figure out how to take advantage of these new channels. Corporate Facebook profiles like the one created for my company CEDS is getting more common. Companies use Twitter to get ‘closer’ to their customers and get opinions and buzz firsthand and finally LinkedIn has become one of the biggest sources for corporate recruitment.

Get amazed by the numbers - watch the YouTube video ‘Social Media Revolution’