Danita Blackwood

A Business & Technology Pioneer Has a Warning About a Different Ecosystem!

Danita Blackwood — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:01:00 GMT

Later tonight Former Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to speak to Democratic Party faithful. It has been eight years since Gore lost one of this nation's closest elections for the White House. But he has emerged as the most recognized unsuccessful U.S. presidential nominees in history. Gore's efforts to protect the environment in a method that strengthens the economy were the basis of a best-selling book and then an award-winning documentary. Last year, An Inconvenient Truth, won two Academy Awards!

I've been writing a lot and reading even more about how going green and become environmentally friendly can be a money-saver and good will creator for small firms. But another kind of environmental concern has gotten my attention: a warning about the nation's innovation ecosystem.

While there are a lot of jabs about Gore and the invention of the Internet, an early Web innovator is sounding an alarm about the health of the environment for innovation in the United States. Judy Estrin has written a book based on an extensive tech innovation background. Estrin co-founded Bridge Communications in 1981 which merged into 3Com five years later. In 1988 Estrin was involved in start-up Network Computing Devices and became its CEO in 1993. Estrin's third start-up, Precept Software, was launched in 1995 and acquired three years later by Cisco. She went on to help launch other firms and also serves on FedEx and Walt Disney; but she is a new author too!

In her new book, "Closing the Innovation Gap", Estrin says innovation is crucial to social, economic and cultural development. Estrin interviewed over 150 technology innovators as part of the research for the book and concludes a short-term outlook and a reliance on quick fixes and fast profits have diluted the curiosity and patience that sustain true innovation and create the potential for future economic growth.

Estrin calls not only on business leaders, but government and non-profit movers and shakers to save the innovation ecosystem of the nation. Her suggestion for reform is to focus on four challenges - creating energy or reducing its use; understanding climate change; improving health care; and improving personal and national security. To learn more about Estrin and her ideas for reigniting the spark of innovation and creativity, click here.

Small Business Owners Economic Outlook More Positive in New National Survey

Danita Blackwood — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:07:00 GMT

A new national random survey of a thousand small business owners reveals entrepreneurs' economic confidence rose for the second straight month in August, 2008! The survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports, LLC for Discover Business Card indicates the small business concerns about the overall state of the economy continue to improve. The Discover^® Small Business Watch^SM reached 86.9 in August, up 2.3 points from July and more than 15 points higher than June.

"We saw an increase in their confidence in the direction of the overall economy, but that was offset by more owners saying they're having cash flow issues," said Ryan Scully, director of Discover's business credit card. "Their perceptions of the conditions for their own businesses were flat, making this gain harder to pin down. There is still a great amount of caution out there."

The number of owners who think the economy is getting worse dropped to 60 percent from 71 percent in July. In addition, 23 percent of small business owners feel the U.S. economy is getting better, which is the highest rating since August 2007.

51 percent rate the economy as poor, a decrease from 54 percent in July; while 15 percent ranked it as good, up from 11 percent in July.

42 percent say they have experienced cash flow issues over the last 90 days, a significant increase from 33 percent in July 2008.

Perceptions of their own circumstances remained flat this month: 30 percent of owners say economic conditions for their business are getting better, up slightly from 28 percent in July, while 44 percent say conditions are getting worse, up just a point from 43 percent in July.

On the issues, healthcare remains a growing concern. Three out of four small business owners, 72 percent, do not offer health care to their employees. And it is apparently getting harder to find: 70 percent of owners say that finding affordable healthcare for themselves and their employees is very or somewhat difficult, up from 69 percent in January 2008 and 67 percent in January 2007.

A Lesson for All Ages: Enterprising Student Learns on Several Fronts

Danita Blackwood — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:05:00 GMT

When Michael Showalter's folks asked for a little help from the teenager with the money he would need for college; they had in mind an after-school job at a local business or maybe helping out neighbors with odd jobs. But instead of working for someone, Michael started a small business, Giuseppe's Italian Ice, which quickly turned a profit. The teen was hooked and used his business' success story to win the McKelvey Foundation's $40,000 college scholarship, awarded to student entrepreneurs. Now the recent high school graduate will use the scholarship money to continue his education at the University of Michigan.

The teen's enterprise, Giuseppe's Italian Ice, operates out of pop-up tents, dishing up traditional Italian Ice to tired, thirsty fairgoers at festivals and outdoor events across the Midwest. Showalter buys the product from Little Jimmy's Italian Ice in New Jersey, where it's manufactured according to a century-old family recipe.

"It's healthier than most desserts, especially stuff that you find at a festival -- it doesn't have high-fructose corn syrup," said Showalter. "Popular flavors are lemon, blue raspberry, watermelon and cherry."

His enterprise, named after his father, began a year ago with an initial investment of $14,000. Showalter recouped those startup costs handily, and now Giuseppe's has eight employees, friends of Showalter's. Operating expenses included buying two tents -- Showalter has invested another $20,000 to expand his market, and next year, Giuseppe's Italian Ice will be sold in both Ohio and Michigan.

According to Dennis Moore vice president of Little Jimmy's, Showalter demonstrated true entrepreneurial grit, planning and executing a business that could have taken a lifetime to build, in just a matter of months

As tuitions rise and the economy slows, enterprising students can benefit from the trend toward giving among successful entrepreneurs who are feeling philanthropic as retirement approaches. Colleges offering entrepreneurship majors fund scholarships as well. Showalter graduated from high school this year, and hasn't chosen a major yet at the University of Michigan. However, he is sure he'll continue selling Giuseppe's Italian Ice at festivals and fairs, right through college.

The Entrepreneurial Scholarship offered by the McKelvey Foundation is awarded to high school students who start their own businesses or nonprofit agencies. The foundation's founder is Andy McKelvey, who started his own first business selling eggs at age 14, and went on to found several successful businesses, the largest of which evolved into the online employment ad giant, Monster.com. The McKelvey Foundation currently supports over 600 students achieving a better future. You can find more information at http://www.mckelveyfoundation.org/

IKEA ® Plans to Invest 77 Million Dollars in Green Start-Up Businesses

Danita Blackwood — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:03:00 GMT

^{IKEA^® plans to invest $77 million in startup firms working to create environmentally friendly products, furniture and technologies. These products are reportedly more than just the furniture and home products now associated with the international retailer; but could include alternative home energy products including wind turbines, solar panels and water conservation systems for home and small business use. You can learn more about the retailer's environmental approach in a new report online. Click here to access.
IKEA^® has more than thirty five stores in the United States and more than 285 stores worldwide. In October, IKEA's first store will turn 50! The Almhult store in Sweden will celebrate fifty years in business. A much younger division, IKEA BUSINESS^®, is now operating in 22 countries around the globe to serve creative entrepreneurs. In October, IKEA BUSINESS^® and the WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP EXCHANGE^®are hosting a business building conference for entrepreneurs in the Boston area. You can get details and register online today by clicking here. The WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP EXCHANGE^®is a partner business organization with SBTV.com.}

Billions of Dollars in Business Taxes Go Unpaid

Danita Blackwood — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:03:00 GMT

Many foreign and U.S. based companies are failing to pay federal income tax according to federal researchers. A study by the Government Accountability Office indicates two-thirds of US corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. The report finds a majority of foreign owned businesses escaped a tax bill during the same seven year period.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million US companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the US corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

Internal Revenue Service records reveal over one point six million U-S businesses owe over $58 billion in unpaid federal payroll taxes, including interest and penalties. Federal investigators charge these businesses are taking advantage of the existing tax enforcement and administration system to avoid fulfilling or paying federal tax obligations.

Over a quarter of payroll taxes are owed by businesses with more than 3 years of unpaid payroll taxes. Some of these business owners repeatedly accumulated tax debt from multiple businesses. For example, the IRS found over fifteen hundred entrepreneurs to be responsible for non-payment of payroll taxes at three or more businesses, and 18 were responsible for not remitting payroll taxes for a dozen different businesses!

The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress and the recent testimony about the billions of dollars in unpaid taxes owed by businesses before a Senate Committee is online. You can find more details by clicking on this link: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081034t.pdf

Peer to Peer Networking

Danita Blackwood — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:50:00 GMT

When most small business owners talk about networking; they are referring to a business conference or a local chamber luncheon. More savvy entrepreneurs are taking their networking online; for example SBTV.com Small Biz Central, is an online destination where small business owners and the self-employed can take part in forums, share ideas, and network much as they would at the local Rotary club. There is another online networking getting a lot of attention; peer to peer networking. Peer-to-peer networking, or P2P, has become the method of choice for sharing music and videos. While initially used to share pirated material, the system is now used by NBC, BBC and others to deliver legal video content and by Hollywood studios to distribute movies online. Experts estimate that peer-to-peer systems generate 50 to 80 percent of all Internet traffic. Most predict that number will keep going up.

However this peer-to-peer networking is the source of tension between users of bandwidth-hungry peer-to-peer users and struggling Internet service providers. To ease this tension, researchers at the University of Washington and Yale University propose a neighborly approach to file swapping, sharing preferentially with nearby computers. This would allow peer-to-peer traffic to continue growing without clogging up the Internet's major arteries, and could provide a basis for the future of peer-to-peer systems. A paper on the new system, known as P4P, will be presented this week at the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communications meeting in Seattle.

"Initial tests have shown that network load could be reduced by a factor of five or more without compromising network performance," said co-author Arvind Krishnamurthy, a UW research assistant professor of computer science and engineering. "At the same time, speeds are increased by about 20 percent."

"We think we have one of the most extensible, rigorous architectures for making these applications run more efficiently," said co-author Richard Yang, an associate professor of computer science at Yale.

The project has attracted interest from companies. A working group formed last year to explore P4P and now includes more than 80 members, including representatives from all the major U.S. Internet service providers and many companies that supply content.

"The project seems to have a momentum of its own," Krishnamurthy said. The name P4P was chosen, he said, to convey the idea that this is a next-generation P2P system.

In typical Web traffic, the end points are fixed. For example, information travels from a server at Amazon.com to a computer screen in a Seattle home and the Internet service provider chooses how to route traffic between those two fixed end points. But with peer-to-peer file-sharing, many choices exist for the data source because thousands of users are simultaneously swapping pieces of a larger file. Right now the choice of P2P source is random: A college student in a dorm room would be as likely to download a piece of a file from someone in Japan as from a classmate down the hall.

"We realized that P2P networks were not taking advantage of the flexibility that exists," Yang said.

For the networks considered in the field tests, researchers calculated that the average peer-to-peer data packet currently travels 1,000 miles and takes 5.5 metro-hops, which are connections through major hubs. With the new system, data traveled 160 miles on average and, more importantly, made just 0.89 metro-hops, dramatically reducing Web traffic on arteries between cities where bottlenecks are most likely to occur.

Tests also showed that right now only 6 percent of file-sharing is done locally. With the tweaking provided by P4P algorithms, local file sharing increased almost tenfold, to 58 percent. The P4P system requires Internet service providers to provide a number that acts as a weighting factor for network routing, so cooperation between the Internet service provider and the file-sharing host is necessary. But key to the system is that it does not force companies to disclose information about how they route Internet traffic.

Other authors of the paper are Haiyong Xie, a Yale graduate now working at Akamai Technologies Inc., Yanbin Liu, at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and Avi Silberschatz, professor and chair of computer science at Yale. The UW research was supported by the National Science Foundation. The presentation will take place Thursday, Aug. 21, 1:45 p.m. at the Grand Hyatt Regency in Seattle. For more information on the presentation, see http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/?q=node/402. For more information on P4P, see a Yale press release at http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=5859.

Technology Can Help Business Owners Monitor Employees -- Is it Invasion of Privacy?

Danita Blackwood — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:02:00 GMT

Technology is transforming almost every part of business including human resources. Technical tools including global positioning systems, internet monitoring and biometric readers allow employers to monitor staff for safety and vital business reasons.

But where does a business owner stand in using surveillance technology to record employee activities for business purposes? Could a worker make a claim of invasion of privacy if their phone calls, computer use, or company car is monitored with GPS technology by their employer?

To avoid liability, employers should notify employees that the employer reserves the right to use GPS to monitor location, or technology to check phone and other communications or activities for safety and business reasons. SBTV.com Legal Advisor Cliff Ennico offers tips on legally monitoring employees and independent contractors in this streaming video segment I produced. Click here to see the segment.Any expectation of privacy may be avoided by notifying employees that company vehicles have GPS trackers installed and/or that company-issued cell phones have GPS capability, and that the employer may monitor vehicle (and employee) location and movement. Employers may justify GPS monitoring to employees as an aid in the recovery of stolen vehicles, to locate the vehicle (and the employee) in an accident or emergency, to ensure that drivers are taking required rest and meal breaks, and to monitor employee efficiency. You will find many more legal tips and segments about common workplace and business issues on www.sbtv.com

Going for the Green Could Mean Gold for Your Business

Danita Blackwood — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:03:00 GMT

As I write this, there is a conversation outside my door about the Olympic games and the gold medal race underway. Many entrepreneurs are also in a race to build their business, but one group today is urging you to think green.

You have heard you should think green for the environment; but one upcoming event is urging women business owners to go for the green to build business. The National Association of Women Business Owners, NAWBO, is hosting a two-day event coming up September 19^th and 20^th, 2008 at Disney World. The event is based around three "G's"----Growth, Golf, and Global Good!

The Florida event scheduled for Disney's BoardWalk Resort is a business-development conference designed especially for women entrepreneurs. There will be two days of activities including procurement, matchmaking and educational sessions, along with a golf tournament for players of all levels and best practices on sustainable business. To learn more about the event, view the full agenda and register, visit http://www.goforthegreens.com/ SBTV.com is a NAWBO premier media partner.

Farmers Sell Produce & Products Online with Free New Service

Danita Blackwood — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:05:00 GMT

Could the computer replace the roadside farmer's stand? Some tech savvy farmers are letting clicks sell their produce!

A new, free online service from the University of Maryland allows consumers to buy the freshest food Maryland farms have to offer with just a click. FoodTrader.org is a virtual farmer's market that lets small independent Maryland farms create an instantaneous listing of the fresh foods they have to sell, the price and the location.

Since going live in mid July, listings from more than 20 farms have included specialty cuts of meat, all types of fruits and vegetables, flowers, honey, dairy products and even soap made from goat's milk.

The new Website is available free to any consumer, Maryland business or institution. The Maryland Restaurant Association is one of the early organizations cooperating.

At a time when rising fuel prices are making the long distance transportation of food more expensive and amid growing concern about the vehicle emissions that contribute to climate change, "buy local" programs have suddenly become more popular. More consumers are thinking green and want to eat fresh and eat local.

"Buying directly from Maryland farms just makes good economic sense," says Gerrit Knaap, director of the National Center for Smart Growth. "We have some of the best quality food you could ever want to eat right here in Maryland."

One important aspect of the FoodTrader.org Website is that it includes a category for charities. Farmers can receive tax deductions for donations that they make to the Maryland Foodbank. Consumers can also make a food pantry donation and receive a deduction.

In addition to buying what farmers are offering to sell on FoodTrader.org, consumers can also make individual requests online for a particular item. All payment arrangements are made between farmer and consumer. FoodTrader.org is a secured website that will be monitored and maintained by the Environmental Finance Center staff. The website was developed with support from the Keith Campbell Foundation, the Abell Foundation, and the Biophilia Foundation.

A Baseball Sweepstakes Could Send You on a Free Vacation to Cooperstown & Help Others Too!

Danita Blackwood — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:03:00 GMT

Baseball seems to be on my mind a lot lately. Of course, I live in one of the greatest sports cities in the United States: Saint Louis. The Cardinals are not a small business; but many local entrepreneurs are suppliers at Busch Stadium. Saint Louis has been recognized nationally as a great sports city with very loyal fans. The Blues, the Rams and many collegiate teams give Saint Louisans plenty to cheer about.

I recently wrote about research comparing winning baseball teams and successful small business teams. Some very smart professors have found that winning in business and in baseball requires teams be built around key players on the team. You should be able to click here and read the post on core players in baseball and business.

Today a small business owner who has built her enterprise around baseball is on my mind. Pati Grady is a baker who launched the Cooperstown Cookie Company in October 2004 at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Her company, the Cooperstown Cookie Company makes Classic Baseball Shortbread cookies, Chocolate Baseball Caps, baseball cookie gift towers and party favors. The Cooperstown Cookie Company has developed a special line of baseball gifts with the National Baseball Hall of Fame called Baseball Anyone Can Play. Profits from the Baseball Anyone Can Play T-shirts and mugs benefit Pathfinder Village, a community that provides a nurturing home for children and adults with Down syndrome-a place "where each life may find meaning."^TM

Now Grady has found another way to give back and help her community. She is behind a new sweepstakes to promote her community, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and give a great trip to one lucky winner and a friend. This baker is calling her promotion the "Ultimate Cooperstown Baseball Weekend." The winner and a companion will receive a trip valued at over two thousand dollars as the sweepstakes grand prize. Included are a luxury two-night stay in Cooperstown, 2 tickets to the Worlds Series Gala at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hall of Fame, meals at Cooperstown's leading restaurants, and gifts from select Cooperstown retailers.

If it sounds like fun to you, enter the sweepstakes through August 30 by visiting www.CooperstownCookie.com. No purchase necessary. Good Luck. The Cooperstown Cookie Company, the youngsters at Pathfinder Village and the good people of Cooperstown sound like a winning team to me!

Winning Teams in Baseball & Business: Core Players

Danita Blackwood — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:02:00 GMT

It is a summer weekend and you may be thinking about the great American past-time: baseball. Take a moment or two and check out new research comparing winning baseball teams and winning business teams that got my attention. It could help your local little league team and your small business team too!

It seems some very smart professors have found that winning in business and in baseball requires teams be built around key players on the team. In fact, researchers find that baseball teams investing in highly skilled pitchers and catchers, whom they consider "core role" players, enjoy greater success. This model, they say, also translates to business work teams, which should be constructed around strategic core role holders rather than individual characteristics.

Teams are generally thought of as a group of individuals working together to achieve something of value, whether it is the goal of a baseball team to win games or a business team put together to help the organization be competitive.
"Teams are very much a part of organizations," says Stephen Humphrey, an assistant professor of management at Pennsylvania State University's State's Smeal College of Business. He cited a 1999 study that found 50 percent of business organizations employed teams in a meaningful capacity and "given what we have learned in the intervening years, the use of work teams has become even more prevalent."

Humphrey and colleagues Frederick Morgeson of Michigan State University and Michael J. Mannor of the University of Notre Dame have produced research on creating work teams based upon what they identify as core roles within the team rather than focusing on the individuals comprising the team. Their findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Much of the research in team composition has tended to center on individuals and leveraging their attributes to create an effective team, the researchers noted. While individuals on the team are important, Humphrey and his colleagues contend that even more important are the core, or central, roles within the team. Core role holders are those who encounter more of the problems that need to be overcome by the team, have a greater exposure to the tasks that the team is performing and are more central to the workflow of the team.

"Consider a surgical team where one role performs the surgical procedures, another assists the surgeon and yet another provides and monitors anesthesia. Though the assistant and anesthetist are important to the team's success, it is the surgeon who has the central role," said Humphrey.

"Our contention is that the structure of a team consists of different roles and that some are more important than others. "All roles are not created equally," said Humphrey, hence the emergence of core role holders.

Further, the researchers suggest that organizations allocate more resources toward the primary role holders, based upon their past successes and job-related skills, because they are more important to overall team performance.

To test their theories regarding team roles, the researchers studied the performances of Major League Baseball teams and the roles of players from 1974 to 2002. Why baseball teams? Humphrey noted that lessons learned from how baseball teams are assembled have distinct implications for teams in organizational settings. Additionally, there are cleaner performance metrics in baseball than other work venues. Statisticians keep track of everything players do on the field and their performance can be clearly and objectively measured in terms of their team functions. Also, in baseball there is a clear difference between core and non-core role holders, according to the researchers.

Humphrey and his colleagues determined that pitchers and catchers meet the criteria for strategic core role holders, because all plays start with the pitcher and catcher, who calls the pitches. Regardless of how a play develops, the pitcher and catcher are both involved at the beginning, whereas no other player is guaranteed to be involved. Thus the pitcher and catcher handle more work than other roles. Also, the pitcher and catcher are the centers of communication. Their review of team performances showed that teams with more experienced and highly skilled pitchers and catchers won more games than teams that employed equally skilled and experienced players among other team players, such as infielders and outfielders.

"While other positional players, especially the hitters who produce runs, are important to the team's success, they are not considered core role holders," Humphrey noted. They also found that teams investing greater resources in their pitchers and catchers were usually more successful.

Humphrey concedes that those directly connected to the game, including managers, coaches, general managers, scouts and players may dispute the researchers' designation of pitchers and catchers as core role players, but the point is they are the only players who fit their criteria.

Nevertheless, Humphrey says the same principles of core role responsibilities carry over to the creation of work teams in other organizations."Teaming is very much a staffing question, but it starts with determining roles to be filled and then selecting the right people to perform those roles and that is management's responsibility," said Humphrey. "We suggest that when creating a team, organizations shift the focus onto core roles rather than the individual composition of the team."

"What we often see is a lack of understanding of what produces a successful team," said Humphrey. Too often, once a decision has been made to create a team, greater attention is given to selecting the individuals to serve on the team when more care should be given to determining the various roles needed for the team to be effective and successful.

And investing greater resources in core role performers should result in significantly higher performance than investing in non-core roles. The bottom line from the researchers: to win in baseball and business, teams should be built around strategic core role holders.

We Are a Nation of Searchers

Danita Blackwood — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:05:00 GMT

♫ I've been searching, so long, to find an answer--- ♫
I suppose this music lyric from Chicago probably dates me; but I recall when a search for an answer meant a trip to the library and flipping through drawers of cards to find the right reference material. It is much easier now with computers and smart phones. Now most often, the search for the answer we need is accomplished with a few clicks. In fact, computer search is now second to e-mail as a daily online activity according to a survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The Pew researchers found 49% of online users conducting a search each day, compared to 60% who check their e-mail every day. We are a nation of searchers. So where is your business positioned when all these people are searching for an answer? Is your enterprise placed as the solution to the question they are searching for? Many small firms are using online video to get their business message to consumers. For instance, I wrote and produced a streaming video segment on how entrepreneurs are using online videos. Click here to view it now. Online video is not only for marketing, but can also reduce costs for entrepreneurs. Video conferencing and telemedicine are just two examples of the use of online video proving to be money savers. You will find many more streaming informational videos and articles on great ways to use technology to market a business or launch a new enterprise on www.sbtv.com.

Millions of People Face the Pain at Work Everyday- A Video with Tips to Help

Danita Blackwood — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:04:00 GMT

A head ache or back pain may seem like a common complaint, but it can cause big problems for the busy entrepreneur. Conditions like migraines, back pain, and fibromyalgia can be a real pain - literally! For example, an estimated six to nine million people in the U.S. suffer from Fibromyalgia Syndrome also known as FMS. It strikes people primarily between the ages of 25 - 55. When you look anyone with FMS you'd most likely never guess there's anything wrong; it is known as the invisible disease. However, the debilitating affects of FMS impacts many areas of business. That's why SBTV.com has created a Fibromyalgia Awareness series and one of the segments features some suggestions of accommodations and steps to take to reduce pain at work.

Here are some tips on how to effectively control your pain-and these tips really work-click here now to see the free streaming video segment on how to take some of the pain out your work day.

Where Real Estate Prices Are on the Increase Today and What it Means for Entrepreneurs

Danita Blackwood — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:08:00 GMT

There is big news down on the farm today. It is one of the areas of the nation where the real estate market is looking up! This is not only good news for the land owners, but for many of the small enterprises supporting agriculture.

Rural entrepreneurs are often linked to farming and agriculture and unfortunately don't get the same attention as their big-city counterparts in the world of small business. But today is different.

Farm prices are hitting new records. Not just the prices for corn and other products grown on the land, but the fields! Federal researchers say farmland prices are reaching new levels. Every year the United States Department of Agriculture or USDA examines farm prices across the nation. The latest numbers indicate while the housing and real estate market in cities is soft, the prices down on the farm are soaring!

Even the pastures are seeing an increase in the value according to USDA researchers. Farm real estate values, a measurement of the value of all land and buildings on farms, averaged $2,350 per acre on Jan. 1, 2008, up 8.8 percent from 2007. The $2,350 per acre is a record high and $190 more than a year earlier. Both cropland and pasture values for 2008 are record highs. Cropland values rose by 10 percent to $2,970 per acre, up from the previous high of $2,690 in 2007. Pasture value rose by 6 percent to $1,230 per acre.

Regional increases in the average value of farm real estate ranged from 1.6 percent in the Northeast region to 15.5 percent in the Northern Plains region. The highest farm real estate values remained in the Northeast region, where development pressure continued to push the average value to $5,080 per acre. The Northern Plains region had the lowest farm real estate value, at $1,110 per acre, up 15.5 percent from the previous year. In the Corn Belt region cropland values rose 14.8 percent, to $4,260 per acre. The Southern Plains region increased 12 percent from the previous year, to $1,490 per acre.

The Northern Plains region also had the highest average percentage increase in pasture value, 19.7 percent above 2007. In the Southern Plains and Mountain regions, which account for more than half of the pasture in the U.S., pasture values per acre increased 17.1 percent and 6.4 percent. For more details of the USDA report click here.

This increase in the value of rural real estate is not only good news for the farm owners, but the businesses supporting agriculture including farm equipment, feed stores, and building supply companies.

When Conscience & Closet Collide: A Smart Green Solution for Professionals

Danita Blackwood — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:05:00 GMT

Many small business owners are working to rethink product design and building operations to improve energy efficiency and reduce their impact on the environment. SBTV.com journalists have done many interviews with entrepreneurs who are going green to save some green. That is the focus of today's blog; a green entrepreneur who isn't about caulking, insulation, or fuel economy but fashion! Yes, green fashion!

When it comes to being environmentally friendly and your wardrobe; you no longer have to sacrifice style. One small business owner encourages others to become eco-friendly with a change of clothes, not their professional image or fashion sense. SBTV.com's Ivy Hartman takes you inside a green boutique offering cutting-edge and eco-friendly fashion with a simple click here.