Business Ideas

Tired of being shut down by the “big guys” Andreas Koutsoudakis of Trading Table needed to find a way for small business restaurants to get up to speed with larger corporations. After deciding to tackle the ordering and operating backend systems, he set out to seek advice from the “big ...

The 2016 election was a painful time for most Americans. It was so mentally strenuous that psychologists are still talking about post-election anxiety several months after Election Night.  And where did we process all that anxiety and frustration? Why, Facebook and Twitter, of course. Some have even gone so far as ...

Some people who complain about your business have valid complaints. They’ve tried your product or service and seen a real flaw that you need to fix as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, most people who complain about your business don’t actually help you improve the business the way a valid complainer ...

Years ago, a true-crime television series, City Confidential, took viewers on a weekly trip to an American city and recounted a murder there. It was notable for the resonant, ironic narration by the late Paul Winfield and for the time spent showcasing the personality of each city. This mini-travelogue provided an interesting contrast ...

After my team made the decision to convert our legal status from a nonprofit to a for-profit, the next thing we needed to figure out was how. We navigated the internet for hours and realized there was a dearth of information out there on the subject. The reason is because ...

When Nick Scarpino was 17 years old, he worked the cash register at Portillo’s, a food chain founded in the Chicago area in 1963 known for its hot dogs. Now, he’s vice president of marketing and PR for the brand. In this video, he explains how he climbed the corporate ...

The following edited excerpt is from Tyler Gage’s Fully Alive: Using the Lessons of the Amazon to Live Your Mission in Business and Life.  My co-founder Dan MacCombie’s thesis had been on marsh crab habitats in New England. Mine had been a magical realist novel. We’d been friends since the first ...

At the close of the 1970s, I had a fierce crush on Sam Shepard, the eminent American playwright. Not only was he a serious intellectual for the plays he wrote, like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child and (a few years later), True West and Fool for Love, but in 1978, ...

Persuasive people rule this world. They rise in every company in a way that seems effortless, without putting pressure or strain on the people around them. They’re able to implement more of their ideas and get more help on projects. Some people are born with the power of persuasion, and ...

The end of startup economy is here. How many developing companies have to be absorbed by the giants to prove it? Since 2001, Google has acquired 200 startup companies. That’s more than its 12-per-year acquisition goal. Likewise, Facebook, after a series of striking swallows, continues to terrify Snapchat by mimicking ...