In the face of financial turmoil, business owners are scouring their budgets for places to reduce spending, but Jeff Cornwall, the author, academic, and leading blogger, says there are places where you shouldn't cut back, especially during a recession.
The lessons you learn early in life often form the foundation for what you decide to do later on. That certainly holds true for Jeffrey Cornwall. The author, Entrepreneurial Mind blogger, and inaugural Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship at Tennessee's Belmont University credits his interest in small business to discussions at the dinner table when he was growing up, and to his corporate-expatriate father, who he says is now an "active, octogenarian entrepreneur." Cornwall also is an entrepreneur in his own right: In the late '80s he co-founded and ran a health-care company in North Carolina before he returned to academia nearly a decade later.
Cornwall's books include "Bringing Business to Life," "From the Ground Up: Entrepreneurial School Leadership," and "The Entrepreneurial Educator," his blog has been recognized as Forbes' Best of the Web, and the entrepreneurial programs he has guided (not only for Belmont) have received national recognition. Suffice to say, Cornwall is well-entrenched in all things entrepreneurial. In his conversation with bMighty.com, Cornwall discusses the opportunities of group collaboration, the double-edged sword called social media, and where you should -- and shouldn't -- cut back during a recession.
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bMighty: What are some of the trends affecting growing businesses and entrepreneurs?
Jeff Cornwall: One of the interesting trends is a real decoupling of traditional organizations. More and more, you see networked organizations of people coming together as individual entities, or small teams coming together and working on projects. They are creating opportunities to tackle problems, but they also present issues of information-sharing and collaboration. [For example], a couple of my alumni have a business in the video market. They're doing projects that take them into other arenas, and they need to subcontract and make joint ventures with consultants.
It even creates international challenges. Another one of my students develops Web 2.0 programs, and he uses programmers around the world. It's creating issues of quality assurance, but it opens up opportunities for him. But with opportunities come new challenges.
The tech world is providing new solutions, and some of the convergence in tech will allow us to integrate even more. I could imagine technology evolving to the point where real-time conferences are on handheld devices. These not only create opportunities in the tech space, but it also creates opportunities for people to tackle problems.
In a study sponsored by Intuit, the Institute for the Future envisioned a new merchant class with lots of individual people working autonomously and tackling projects together. There are 20 million people in the U.S. that classify themselves as self-employed. Many of them are banding together.
bMighty: What tech tools do you recommend for entrepreneurs and growing businesses?
Cornwall: I'm not a techie kind of guy, but I'm working with entrepreneurs who are. There are fascinating applications in Web 2.0, and now we're getting to Web 3.0. The power and ability they give you to share information is incredible.
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bMighty: Do you think social media is beneficial to growing businesses or a waste of time?
Cornwall: Anything can be either of those things. Years ago, I was one of the last people to get a fax machine. I wasn't sure it was cost-effective. I saw it being used a lot as a waste of time. Any new technology takes time to figure out how to use, and also how to use it effectively. I use things now that I used to be skeptical about being productive. I am seeing some real indications that these social media tools can be used productively. There is a lot of overkill, but I think it allows for collaborative work that's collaborative in a truly synchronous state. That can get to be pretty powerful. If I can do applications with someone across the world in real time, that is really powerful. It takes the whiteboard, creative-solving process out of the conference room.
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