By Monica Mendoza Kevin Kvols is determined not to be boxed in by the current economy. Just nine months ago, he laid off a round of employees — a first for his 23-year-old Companion Habitats company, and it hurt. But a new spin-off venture in reusable, collapsible crates and disaster-relief shelters promises to vault Kvol’s [...]
Continue reading …As an economist dealing with public policy issues, and teaching business and economics classes at the graduate level, I often wonder why some people grasp basic economic principles while others don’t. After explaining the economics of a policy issue, for example, it’s not unusual for a student to say, “But I feel differently.” Indeed, from [...]
Continue reading …Tim Littleton is happiest when he’s in the kitchen — slicing asparagus, putting lamb chops on the grill or perhaps preparing 25 pounds of pulled pork. So, though he’s not a chef, buying Chefs Catalog was a natural fit for him. Also, Littleton had been in the catalog business here — he owned a company [...]
Continue reading …No one becomes a fully mature leader overnight. We all develop our leadership potential over time through exposure to increased responsibilities, frequent leadership experiences, and unfortunately, repeated failures. Although there are many different paths to leadership, there seems to be a predictable path that all of us go through to becoming a fully developed, and [...]
Continue reading …President Obama rolled out the big guns in late May and early June against the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. First, the administration turned to Hollywood. Movie director James Cameron was brought in on June 1, along with various scientists and experts, to brainstorm on how to plug the oil leak. Why Cameron? Well, he’s [...]
Continue reading …By Monica Mendoza No longer willing to let intermediaries do the job, Nora Lamar took her first trip to Europe a few years ago in search of the perfect crystal. She visited manufacturing plants in the countryside of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria and watched how artisans cut crystal by hand. It was a [...]
Continue reading …Economic growth and job creation overwhelmingly are about entrepreneurs and investors willing to undertake the risks that come with starting up and expanding businesses. The U.S. economy, of course, started to turn down in December 2007, with matters getting far worse when the credit meltdown fully hit in the latter part of 2008. After the [...]
Continue reading …You can’t get there from here. Either you’re in a vertical or a horizontal. Some are in a diagonal. At one company I recently worked with, the matrix is three-dimensional. There are hard-line relationships and dotted-line relationships. And, most would admit, there are gaps — everywhere. So, like the popular movie series after the same [...]
Continue reading …ObamaCare was sold as a way to help the little guy, including small businesses, especially against those big, bad insurance companies. However, when this legislation was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in March, supporters failed to mention the many ills it would impose on small businesses and their employees. Wait [...]
Continue reading …By Monica Mendoza Inside Mind Studios at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, a small team of engineers is working behind closed doors on inventions that could change your life. Like any inventors hammering away at the next big thing, they keep the details of their creations under wraps until a project is unveiled [...]
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