Why hire without industry experience

A manager that is looking for a new team member faces a stressful situation: The sooner does his firm need to fill a position, the more pressure lies on his shoulders. As a result, he is less likely to find the person that the firm actually needs. When the HR are desperate for someone to occupy a role, that role is prone to be filled with somebody who may have a shining resume and a laundry list of helpful accomplishments, and yet lack the right personality that would match the employing company's profile. What ends up happening after signing of the contract and a period of successful, promising work is a clash between the identities of the company and the new employee.
The new business development manager presses for a lower-cost source of coffee beans in a cafe that prizes its own fair trade values. The new marketing officer gets fed up with daily mandatory dessert tastings while working for a trendy bakery in the middle of a busy city.
Both the cafe and the bakery are the companies that they are because of their staff's original quirks that the companies do not have to accommodate to survive. The new employees don't fit in - and that doesn't mean they are bad workers. Their values just don't correspond with your firm's.
That is where hiring on a rolling basis would be handy. Looking out for the right people for a venture when it doesn't have a particular role to fill takes pressure off the hiring process and therefore allows the firm to find the people that would make it what it aims to be.
With that said, the new employees do not have to have specific skills - since there aren't certain positions they would fulfill. Instead, they would create their own roles within the company by bringing their own quirks and passions to the table. Any technical skills can then be acquired already on the job (this should be especially easy considering that the new guy loves working at the firm. Those who don't love it shouldn't be hired.)
Industry experience might even become an obstacle in this situation. Having worked at another place that offers similar products as yours, the person's output will be impacted by the rival's values. A conflict of corporate differences would then not help any business that seeks to have its individual voice. And any firm, at that, should aim to do just that.

The Weekend Business Challenge 2: the glorious results

NVSBS spent a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend in appreciation of our blessings and in speculation about corporate social responsibility. Now, with another WBD weekend behind us, NVSBS would like to present two articles about the practical implications of corporate social responsibility.

Today, we'd like to feature several words by Nikolay Safonov, CEO of NVS Business Solutions. Sasha's article on CSR will come in the next post on the NVSBS blog, so tune back in on Sunday, comment, subscribe, and enjoy the world of small opportunities for improvement.

The Internship Program that Might Save the World

Some can argue that corporate social responsibility can only coexist with diminished profit. I would like to offer a form of CSR that creates value for shareholders.

There are tons of high-school dropouts that end up in depressed sectors of economy with very little hope for social elevation. In the meantime, corporations suffer from high staff turnover, and consequential losses from the “Rookie effect”.

What if the corporations offer internship not only to university students, but to these outsiders too? Sounds crazy? But listen. When an internship is positioned as a “one shot” opportunity, disadvantaged applicants will take this opportunity to break away from their misery very seriously. Meanwhile, they will have a taste of the corporate environment, which can give them an impulse to go back to school.

In addition, during the internship they will acquire skills that are difficult to acquire in a different atmosphere. These will open up their choices in regards to employment.

Eventually, when the expertise gap is closed, high school drop-outs will be much more inclined to apply for a job in a fostering company.

As a result, everybody will win. The society will see the number of people living below a poverty line decrease. Companies will recruit loyal, skillful and dedicated staff.

Thank you - can the world be more beautiful?

At NVSBS, we are thankful for the innovators in this world. They bring new joy to our lives every day.

We are thankful for those who offer their time to criticize our ideas.

We would like to especially thank those who work while we are on a holiday.

We highly appreciate musicians, cooks, parents, teachers, artists, actors, and gardeners who sacrifice their time for the sake of what they feel is their calling in life.

We are thankful for those who make sacrifices for the sake of what they believe to be the right thing to do.

Thank you, readers. Thank you, subscribers. Thank you, critics and supporters. You bring meaning to this world.

How and why not to rush capital into your company

Perhaps the biggest question one faces when starting a venture for the first time is “How will you afford it?” That question goes both for leaving one's day job and finding capital to support the company. While for the first-time entrepreneur, keeping the day job is a good option that will spare him quite some worry – we've been there – finding fresh capital might be something to hold off for later. Two major streams of increased financial stability and decreased need for borrowing are savings and postponing spending altogether.

The reason saving is so important to success lies in future's uncertainty. If I rely on inheriting a large sum of money at some point in the future and thus neglect my work, my chances at wealth go down every minute I choose to daydream instead of writing a business plan. If a firm's prospect depends on a single angel investor that might or might not show up, I have to suspect that the firm will not live for long, either.

Therefore, if financial injections are inevitable for a venture, it's best to conjure them from personal savings. A borrowing-free approach will make the firm that much more attractive for outside investors later on. It will eliminate the burden for repayment to outside parties. It will relieve a firm from outside controllers. Napoleon Hill said it well in his Law of Success: forming the habit of saving is the only way to independence.

And yet, in most cases, one does not even have to resort to spending his savings for a company to enter its blooming season. A manufacturing firm's need for packaging is a good example of a situation where being thrifty can result in a better costs-to-profit ratio than developing an original spending plan. I'll admit it: Developing and manufacturing new packaging is a fun, creative process. And yet, today's world could use less boxes, bottles, and double cellophane wraps. Instead, one can use that which has already been made. Look, the humanity is looking to reduce the speed at which it fills its landfills. Not to be preachy or to point it out, but yes, great opportunity for some truly socially responsible innovation. Saves money, too.

An even richer source of increased ROI that doesn't require any spending are the intangible assets that inhabit our planet. We humans have things like knowledge, experience, and imagination. Those who have already passed on left us with some pretty good intellectual and physical infrastructure. Those who are still here have not yet reached their full life potential. So, 21^st century entrepreneur, go out there and make use of what other people are more than happy to offer. They will thank you for that.

Quickly before you go catching the wave of free underutilized opportunities, leave your comments and subscribe to the NVSBS blog. We hope you have a blast this weekend.

How to bring Frankenstein's creature to life and then profit from it

Mary Shelley's infamous protagonist Victor Frankenstein knew it from the moment his creature saw the world: Victor's principal venture was going to bring an ROI that even the most optimistic business plan could not predict. Whatever happened there? Victor invested his college years into developing a clear goal, and, before too long, his vision materialized.

Now, I hope that those of you who've read the book realize that I'm joking. NVSBS would not wish the outcome of Frankenstein's actions for anybody. But a part of the story's moral still holds true: With enough persistence and the right idea generation mechanism, one can reach any ambition, including bringing the dead back to life - I'm not even mentioning generating simple everyday sales. Later in the article, I've posted a video that showcases how entrepreneurs would employ Frankenstein's creature in a more desirable way. The video is an excellent example of innovative thought that allowed the German company that made it distribute an extraordinary advertisement by word-of-mouth. I strongly suspect that the reason behind this project's success at going viral rather quickly lies in five concise concepts behind idea generation.

1. Ask questions. Tom Szaky, the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, has said in a presentation I attended earlier this year that the whole idea behind his upcycling business started with the question: "What is garbage?" Often, inquiring beyond the matter of fact leads to either greater understanding of the world or to discovering plentiful pathways for innovation, like it did for Tom Szaky. If you make electronics, ask your neighbors about how their lives could be more convenient, and your research and development will see genius coming through. If you are a freelance writer, ask questions when reading the New York Times and your opinion pieces will flourish, and so on.

2. Welcome the unusual. The "unusual" is unusual because people have not recognized its value. What that means is that everything obscure holds abundant wealth for the person who sees its value first and then shows it to the rest. Early adopters also get to indulge in the benefits of welcoming the unusual before the crowd follows. Maybe it's risky, but also it's the only path to successful idea generation: everything that's no longer unusual already holds too many entrepreneurs to support any new business.

3. Embrace the obstacle. Life's troubles are the entrepreneur's biggest assets. Once you think of a way to overcome a hurdle and make life easier for everybody else, you will be able to harvest lots of advantages from your findings. Apple does this by eliminating bulky hardware. Blackberry does this by putting your e-mail account into your pocket. MS Outlook does this by combining the functionalities of multiple professional software packs under one roof. You get the picture.

4. Link unconnected areas. Being an expert in more than one area or just thinking about several topics on a daily basis can bring your idea generating abilities a mile closer to those of celebrated polymaths like Michelangelo and da Vinci, whose expertise ranged from engineering and anatomy to writing and sculpture. With that said, broad interests can put a small business owner at significant advantage because of the immense innovation possibilities that reaching into multiple fields keeps. If your firm is a computer repair store, and you minored in art in college, one day you might as well come up with the idea of gold-plating your customers' MacBooks as an extra service.

5. Use the resources on hand. Maybe neither you nor I hold millions in the bank vault, and getting capital in this economy might not be the easiest task either. However, you do have plenty of other assets that are already free. Not to limit you down, but here are some examples: public domain art, the local library, tap water, your congressman's ears, the ocean, the sky, your friends and family, and, importantly, your knowledge and experience.

Now let's look at the real Frankenstein's creature and why innovative thought is not nearly as scary as Mary Shelley dared to depict it.

Let us know in the comments what you thought about the video and how soon you could tell the monster's identity. And, finally, don't forget to subscribe; it's good for you.

How to invent a bicycle

Every now and then, an idea will stick to my mind and will not let go so easily. The invention will materialize in my imagination in different shapes and forms, and sometimes the idea will be so pervasive that I will put effort into making it happen. This "bug" may be a completely new thought or just an improvement on some previous development, but in any case, I predict that most readers here are not immune from the inventor syndrome either. From personal experience, I can say that the brain children of plenty of inventors, entrepreneurs, designers, and artists go through the following life cycle that I'd like to call instinctive idea generation:

1. An image of a final product suddenly pops up in the thinker's mind
2. The image goes through some massaging and development as a thought
3. The owner of the image puts it down on paper
4. A model of the conceptual product goes through tests
5. A final version of the product comes out into the markets

Realistic or not, this sequence is a recipe for creative disaster. It can work with aesthetic creations, but with anything else, the five-step system above fails to ensure that the product meets a need or serves any sort of purpose. Therefore, even if the final product manages to reach the point of launch, its best chance of success will be to become a fad, and then quickly die out. That resonates with the idea that instinctive idea generation may create a cool-looking object, but consumers will quickly realize its lack of meaning and abandon it to the creator's despair.

Nevertheless; I plead thee, innovator: Do not despair. Things are not so hopeless for the creative thinkers out there. The best way to ensure that a project fulfills a purpose is to start with a question or a problem instead of a ready image. As an illustration of a successful innovation-based venture, Artemy Lebedev Studio published overviews of the creation process for each of their designs. For them, every project starts with a clearly formulated goal. Then they proceed to the fun part of thinking and creating. The results are stable and sound.

We would love to hear about your experiences with innovation and creative business models. Furthermore, NVSBS strongly encourages innovative thinking and is here for any visionary who might want some advice about the practical side of it all. We look forward to seeing new comments and subscriptions, and you will hear from us on Sunday! Have a good Friday now.

Does not doing homework sound like a good idea?

Ideas can be pretty amazing tools. At certain points in time, great ideas laid down the foundation for great inventions, remarkable commercials, masterpiece paintings, and every single book at your local library. Does that mean that every idea is good enough to seed your next victory? Maybe not. In fact, all the novels lying in publishers' slush piles without use, and all those projects that send well-established corporations into the red, also have the ideas of well-meaning individuals behind them. Nevertheless, the mere possibility of failure should never discourage you, especially considering that market research can significantly lower a project's riskiness.

So what is research? On the easy end, it can come down to a simple Google search for the information you need. On the other extreme, you might need to spend hours in a lab, hire test subjects, or conduct a survey at a mall. Take our word on it - there are many ways to go about researching and testing a business idea, and it is therefore important to know about the attributes of effective market research for a successful venture.

The main goal of it all

Setting the right goals is paramount to a useful outcome. These do not have to be too detailed if your project is just at its beginnings, but specificity helps get the project started on the rightest foot possible.

Here are some example questions for an entrepreneur researching his idea of a new vegetarian restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota:

"Do humans enjoy vegetarian food?"

"How much money do people in St. Paul, Minnesota, spend on eating out every week?"

"How many St. Paul residents adhere to a strict vegan diet?"

This short list of things allows the entrepreneur to arrive at the ultimate goal of his research, and that is whether the market for vegetarian dining in St. Paul is big enough to support a new restaurant. Once he is able to answer this question, he will know for sure if his idea of a vegetarian diner is viable.

Beware of the confirmation bias monster

The same way the parent of a human would tend to see his child's accomplishments as signs of genius and dismiss his child's flaws as unimportant, the parent of an idea is predisposed to view his project favorably. So, idea parent, beware: The confirmation bias is out to get you. Ways to combat it include hiring an independent party to conduct the research, blinding all parties so that no participant in research is aware if its ultimate purpose, or just constantly reminding the ultimate aim of market research to yourself.

Questionnaires

Surveys are relatively simple to arrange. Thus, if you decide that this is the tool of your choice, it's important to keep some survey questions open-ended to allow for unpredicted responses. Other things to keep in mind are the various biases that can arise from question wording and from the order in which questions are asked.

Focus Groups

Focus groups can serve as a source of rich material, but are difficult and costly arrangements that require skilled moderators. Before setting one up, consider the following ways that these groups can go wrong: participants influence each others' reactions, and no response is genuine; the moderator intimidates the group into his way of thinking, or the participants do not take their job seriously. These pitfalls see a variety of researchers break their informational legs, including large corporations like Apple.

Market research is a fundamental task that goes into new product development and management. Ideas generation, another major task in the new product offering field, will be the next topic for discussion on the NVSBS blog.