Diversity MBA Magazine – Managing Diversity, Executive Leadership Development, Diversity Jobs & Hiring

As the old saying goes: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. That statement is especially true when referring to a business website. Customers worldwide are looking for products and services online, and there is no shortage of sites from which to choose. Broken links, spelling and grammatical errors, html errors, annoying flashing graphics or pop-ups can actually drive visitors away as quickly as they came.

Does your web content, layout, and page links come across as professional and say the things you want about your business? Do too many bells and whistles essentially dilute your main message?

Business owners and entrepreneurs should perform periodic website maintenance to their sites to ensure that they continue to come off professionally and that the sites work hand-in-hand with furthering their businesses.

When evaluating site, here are the five most important things to check:

1. Quality Design
2. Consistency
3. Ease of Navigation
4. Timeliness
5. Credibility

Because design quality can be subjective, a good recommendation is to cater your site design to your industry and customer tastes. For example, if you are selling scrap-book supplies, then a “homemade” feel for your website might be appropriate. Alternatively, if you are a dentist, something with a light, clean, simple layout will better instill confidence for inquiring patients. Maintain your branding by using your logo, picking colors that match your other materials and including pictures that support the imagery you want associated with your business. Regardless of the style of your site, the best indicator of quality design is page consistency.

Page Consistency

The web can be a frightening place. When you click on a link in a webpage, it can take you almost anywhere. When your customers click on links within your site, add to their comfort level by making it clear that they are still in your site. The number one way to do this is to have a consistent page template by using the same colors, style and placement of page elements on each page.

Color is important – we make associations based upon color all the time. Keep it consistent or have a good reason why you are changing them from page to page. A rainbow of color can be overwhelming.

Stick to one style – organic or linear. Organic elements use soft curves that flow together. Linear elements are straight with sharp angles. Either might be appropriate for your business, but pick one and stick to it.

Keep one page template – site visitors expect the structural elements to stay in place. When someone visits your site, they become oriented to the site structure and expect the elements (navigation, logo, page headers, etc.) in the same place on every page.

Site Navigation

Site navigation is the primary element in a professional website. If your customers cannot easily find what they are looking for, they will look elsewhere and that usually means your competition. Ensure you have a distinct navigation bar positioned either along the left hand side of the page, along the top or a combination of both. Try to organize your content in as few categories as possible and use a table of contents page when the visitor clicks each category with a brief description of the category and links to subcategories with more information. To make it easier to maintain your site, it’s best to be able to add new subcategories as page content in the page without having to rework your site navigation bar each time.

Timeliness

A stale website makes the rest of your business look stale. This does not mean you have to change the design of your website every month or even every year, but it does mean that you should keep an eye on the content. Does your website list an “upcoming event” from 2004? Is an old promotion still on the site?

If you can change the sign on your store or the message on your voice mail, you should also have an easy way to change the content on your website. Do some research and find the best website editing software (There are many free or inexpensive Content Management Systems that will make your website easy to create, edit, expand and update).

You should also have a professional developer resource available for questions and more complicated changes that you cannot do yourself. Some editing services include both do-it-yourself editing and expert developers when you need them.

Credibility

There are many factors that can contribute to or take away from your trustworthiness online. Displaying outdated information is one thing, but others are just as glaring, if not more so. Broken images, bad links, misleading site navigation are all examples of things that lower credibility. Visit your site frequently to ensure your pages are displaying properly, links are updated as things change and content is current.

Make it clear that you are a real business and people can trust and contact you. Show that on each and every page. Place some testimonials and prominently display your contact information. List your email address and always include a phone number.

Take a Look at Your Site Again

Chances are you are already doing some of the above correctly. If you can look at your site and say you are doing everything right, congratulations! If not, take notes about what you would like to do better and consult a professional web developer or website maintenance company about implementing these principles. The changes will not cost a fortune, but the results may produce one.

Andreas Thomson is a website maintenance expert at Edit.com, a web maintenance service provider for small businesses.

According to Dr. Robert Hisrich, entrepreneurs can help make the world go round – especially if they look at the world beyond their borders.

“People who think globally tend to be more open-minded and creative, that is the heartbeat of entrepreneurs,” says Hisrich, Garvin Chair for Global Entrepreneurship at the Thunderbird School of Global Management graduate school.  “Not only do we have these global thinkers here at Thunderbird, but we have people who really aspire to be their own boss and create companies in both the profit and non-profit sectors. It’s just a wonderful environment … to create a center and programs here.”

The newest program is the Thunderbird School of Global Management Center for Global Entrepreneurship (CGE). Hisrich is the director of the center and architect of the programming.

Thunderbird is regarded as the world’s leading institution in the education of global managers. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona and with operations in the United States, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Mexico, Central and South America and China, Thunderbird is unique in its commitment to producing global leaders who contribute to sustainable prosperity.

Ranked No. 1 in international business by The Wall Street Journal’s poll of corporate recruiters, U.S. News and World Report, and the Financial Times, Thunderbird’s unique curriculum is based on the principle that to do business on a global scale, executives must know not only the intricacies of business, but also understand the customs of other countries and be able to communicate in different cultures.

The center began operations in 2005, funded by a $60 million gift from businessman and Thunderbird alumnus Samuel Garvin. The goal was to build an entrepreneurship component throughout the curriculum and to establish a world-class center for global entrepreneurship. “The president recognized that a large portion of our alumni were entrepreneurs and that our students wanted a strong entrepreneurship program,” says Hisrich, who also sits on the faculty of the University of Ljubljiana (Slovenia), The Technical University of Vienna and Queensland University of technology in Australia, and has authored numerous books on business and entrepreneurship. “The latest survey of our alumni, done a couple of months ago, shows that 37% of our alumni are entrepreneurs, which is probably higher than any university I know of in the world.”

The program has four areas of focus, organized into centers for excellence — the Global Family Enterprise Center, the Global Center for Innovation and Creativity and Corporate Venturing, the Global Social Enterprise Center and the Global Venture Center.  Each center has a three-pronged thrust of an academic component, a theoretical/research component and a supply and implementation component.

“Every student has to take the Global Enterprise course,” says Hisrich. “Basically this is an introduction to entrepreneurship. They learn all about what an entrepreneur is and what a global enterprise is and how to do these things on an ethically- and socially-conscious basis.”

In addition to Global Enterprise, the entrepreneurship curriculum includes the Global Business Plan course, which covers everything from coming up with the opportunity to developing the business plan to launching the business. Managing the Global Family Business addresses the concerns of family-owned businesses, which constitute 82% of all businesses in the world. Other courses cover financing the business, valuing the business, and growing the business. All of these courses have a global perspective.

The center also sponsors various non-credit courses, including seminars and workshops like the Global Family Enterprise Program held in the early spring. “Family businesses from all over the world, this year including Europe, India, China, Mexico and the United States, come and have this three-day experience,” Hisrich explains.  “They get to know each other and, hopefully, there’s some business done between them. We present seminars and it is led by Ernesto Poza, who has the leading selling book in family-business and is on our staff. We also do the Global Family Business conference in China. We do a two-day version of the four-day program.”

Other seminars include “Global Entrepreneurship: Starting Your New Venture.” It’s a one-day intensive course designed for business people leaving the corporate world and starting their own firms. “We also have a two-day seminar on corporate innovation and intra-preneurship,” says Hisrich. “We have companies from all over the country come to participate. They learn how to actually create new businesses within businesses and create new products.”

Also under Innovation and Creativity, he adds, “We have the Innovation Challenge in the fall, where teams come from all over the world to compete for a first prize of $20,000. The first round of competition is online and we have an international group of judges to judge the contest. Out of the second round, ten teams are selected and paid to come here to Arizona for the final round. We should call it the sustainable Innovation Challenge because the questions are ones the corporate sponsors pose. Last year’s sponsors were very pleased with the responses they got to questions of importance to them.”

The Social Entrepreneurship Center focuses on creating socially responsible organizations. “People who tend to think globally are unusual in that they really have a sense of social enterprise and social fairness. In general, according to studies I’ve done, entrepreneurs are more ethical than managers. Obviously because it’s their company and a lot of times their name is on the company,” Hisrich remarks. “We have quite an interest in social entrepreneurship, we will be offering a credit course in social entrepreneurship this year. We also have projects looking at sustainable innovation. Incoming students are put into teams and look at ways we can become a carbon-neutral campus. The winning idea is funded and the winning team gets a prize. I think last year it was $2,000.”

The center seeks to advance entrepreneurship worldwide and help create and support prosperity. “We have a program on Afghan women,” Hisrich says. The program is part of the Global Venture Center‘s global women entrepreneurs initiative. “We bring over women entrepreneurs from Afghanistan for about three weeks. We give them training on various aspects of doing business and entrepreneurship, and help them create and grow their businesses in a country where it is most difficult not only to just be an entrepreneur, but to be a female entrepreneur.”

The structure and thrust of the program reflects Hisrich’s views on the future of global economic development. “I think that part of the building of [Afghanistan], along with other countries that are moving through economic development, it’s going to be the women. These women are just unbelievable,” he says. “We’re in the process of expanding that program, we’re in negotiation with a major US corporation for funding. Eventually we’re going to expand it to [take it to] women in other countries, we’re looking at a couple of places in Africa.”

Not only does the center train global entrepreneurs, it puts its money where its mouth is and helps new companies get started through its global business incubator, part of the Global Venture Center. The incubator structure and the relationship with the school represent a new direction in university financing. According to Hisrich, it is an idea whose time has come. “We have a different concept than most incubators. If you look at the future of universities, we really ought to have a different model. I think the model of funding education as it exists today is just not sustainable into the future,” he says. “Universities today depend upon endowments, in other words giving from alumni, student tuitions and any research dollars they get from corporate or government resources. We believe we should take a proactive position in forming companies and also a risk as well. Instead of charging rent, we take an equity position in the companies in our incubator.”

Because the Center has a vested interest in the success of the incubator enterprises, it gives the fledgling companies a wealth of support and guidance. Incubator companies are assigned a faculty mentor, an alumni entrepreneur mentor and an Enterprise Scholar, who assists them while learning to run a business from the inside. They also have access to a wealth of business services support from the program.

Throughout its 60-year history, Thunderbird has remained a leader in international business education by offering a cutting-edge curriculum taught by faculty who are recognized as global thought leaders. The new Center for Global Entrepreneurship is handily following in that tradition. “My goal is to be the number one program in global entrepreneurship in the world,” says Hisrich.

For 76 years, Detroit’s General Motors Corp. (GM) was the world’s leading seller of automobiles. Then last year, in a photo finish, Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp. emerged as a close number-two, nearly clipping GM’s title. GM sold 9.36 million cars and trucks worldwide last year, only about 3,000 more than Toyota.

What happened to GM isn’t unique. Other industries traditionally dominated by the United States have watched their market share steadily erode to foreign competitors.

Consider Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY) For much of the 1980s and ‘90s, Kodak was the world’s number-one maker of cameras. But today, Japanese camera makers such as Canon Inc., Sony Corp. and Olympus Corp. have eclipsed Kodak thanks to the growth of digital cameras and Kodak’s slow transformation from film to digital imaging. In the past decade, Kodak lost almost 80% of its market value. In recent years, Kodak has laid off about 28,000 employees and spent nearly $3.4 billion in restructuring. Earlier this year, Kodak executives said they expected to increase sales of digital products, including cameras and printers, to between 10% and 12% annually through 2011, or between $9.8 billion and $10.5 billion.

The competition among personal-computer makers is even tighter. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) are in a three-way race, not so much against each other but against Asian rivals Acer Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. for the top position in the world’s personal-computer market. Both Asian firms are expanding rapidly. Last year, Acer purchased Netherlands-based Packard Bell BV to increase its presence in Europe and Irving, CA-based Gateway Inc. to expand within the U.S. Meanwhile, China-based Lenovo increased its sales in India and Eastern Europe and China, outpacing HP and Dell.

To compete, last year, Dell began selling PCs through retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co., abandoning a long-standing tradition of direct-only sales. Dell also began selling to retailers such as Carerefour SA in Europe and China’s GOME Electrical Appliances. Driven largely by its laptop sales in Asia-Pacific and Japan, Dell’s revenue in the Pacific Rim grew by 41% in its most recent fiscal quarter, the company announced last month.

“Fifteen years ago, the U.S. was seen as the dominant economy in the world. But that has changed,” says A. LaMont Eanes, global vice president of BT Conferencing, a video-conferencing company. “It’s clear, at this point and time, the U.S.  as the dominant position in the world economy is somewhat in doubt. We are competing on a global basis.”

Eanes cites several examples of how 10 years or so ago, companies in various countries banded together in their respective country such as Latin America or Europe to compete against the U.S. Those efforts are now are paying off.

Another reason U.S. companies are now playing catch-up to foreign-based firms is, in large part, due to sheer arrogance, Eanes said. “Detroit [auto makers] did a very poor job of innovating during the 1960’s and 1970s, which was their heyday,” he says. “They continued to turn out basically the same product without concern for quality because there was little competition. Then Honda came out, and then Nissan. They studied the American market and applied principals of quality. Asian companies were better and faster to apply innovation and technology than U.S. companies were. U.S. automakers were caught sleeping and continue to lose market share.”

Domestic Changes

As U.S. businesses expand overseas, there will be greater scrutiny on what happens to jobs stateside. During the recent Democratic presidential race, one of the top issues for candidates was the loss of jobs in the U.S. as corporations not only look for revenue outside of the U.S., but also seek cheaper labor. Both Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY.) proposed ways of re-examining how U.S. businesses can survive. Clinton’s admission that the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which helped U.S. companies employ workers in Mexico and Canada, needs some additional work and may not have been as positive for the U.S. labor market as once thought, was even more startling, considering her husband signed the policy in 1993 as president.

With the weakened U.S. economy on the brink of a recession, domestic companies in danger of losing market share to foreign companies are aggressively expanding to emerging foreign markets including India, China, Russia, and Africa – the same thing foreign companies have been doing for decades in the U.S.

Angel L. Pineiro, a senior operations manager of Citi, the Cincinnati-based global financial services company and one of the nation’s largest financial multinationals, believes as the economy continues to strain, many U.S. companies will reduce their spending on U.S. marketing, advertising, and even business travel and instead focus only on operations that are geared to attracting business and employees outside of the U.S. Foreign companies, he says, will also use the weakened state of the dollar to aggressively invest in the U.S. through mergers and acquisitions.

Pineiro is in a unique position to witness how the economy will impact businesses, particularly from the side of consumer spending. Through Citi’s subsidiary, Citigroup, he oversees Macy’s Department Stores credit card services. Citi also competes with larger banking institutions such as American Express, Bank of America and Wachovia. When consumers fall behind on their credit card bills, or homeowners begin falling behind on their mortgages – especially those involved in the sub-prime mortgage market – or car-owners begin missing their payments, banks such as Citi feel the pinch.

“We’re going to start seeing affects on the bottom line,” Pineiro said. “We’ll have more write-offs for money that we can’t collect.”

Executives from one U.S. based multinational say the near-term future growth has to be foreign markets. For IBM, 63% of its revenue in 2007 came from outside of the U.S., says spokesperson Ian Colley. In fact, in the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, sales in Europe and Asia outpaced domestic sales. IBM is now focusing on meeting its foreign demand. It’s increasing its staff in China, India, Russia, and Brazil, where sales jumped 39% in the first three quarters of 2007. “The fast growth is occurring on a more rapid rate outside of the U.S.,” Colley says, adding that one of the firm’s biggest areas of growth is infrastructures for cell-phone users in India. Telecommunications companies are flocking there because residents are beginning to purchase cell phones nearly as quickly as U.S. residents.

The biggest challenge for multinationals today, Colley says, is changing the corporate mindset that U.S. companies only have to bring their brand to a foreign country to achieve success. That type of insular thinking no longer works in today’s market. “It’s not enough anymore just being a multinational corporation where you set up a copy of yourself in another country,” he says. “You have to establish a global footprint. You have to draw on talent from around the world. And the talent coming out of emerging markets today is very highly skilled.”

In other words, for U.S. multinationals to be successful, American. companies have to become entrenched in their new markets’ cultures rather than just establishing an office there with U.S. born employees and interpreters.

“It’s about global integration,” Colley maintains. “It’s all about integrating your assets around the world, rather than just creating local replicas of yourself. That’s how they will survive.”

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Most American business experts wouldn’t consider the Little Red Book, the legendary distillation of Mao Zedong’s communist philosophy, an essential text for success in a capitalist economy.  But Melvin argues that the text has been a critical factor in the lives of millions of Chinese, and companies who want to do well selling to this growing market would do well to understand how its lessons continue to inform the Chinese character.

Melvin, who spent seven years with the United States-China Business Council in Washington, Beijing and Shanghai, begins each chapter of her handy guidebook with a quote from Chairman Mao, continues with a brief history lesson on Mao’s life, and offers common-sense pointers about doing business in China.  She advocates developing an appreciation of the nation’s long history, cultivating useful contacts and resources over time, and keeping in mind China’s complexities and contradictions, which result in regional differences greater than even those found here at home.

Buy The Little Red Book of China Business at Amazon.com

It takes more than a quality product and a strong management team to make a business really take off. Niraj Kataria, chairman/CEO of Diversity Business Solutions, knows there’s something far more important that an entrepreneur needs: funding. It’s the key to fueling the growth of a business, he says.

Kataria knows the ins and outs of businesses funding. In the early 1990s, he worked on initial public offerings for Gartner Group, a technology research and consulting firm in Stamford, CT., and Moldflow, a plastics solutions company headquartered in Lexington, MA. Seeing and understanding how capital gets raised gave him a solid foundation for everything else he has done since.

The experience at Gartner and Moldflow prepared Kataria well for his next step up the ladder, when he accepted the position of company president for the New Orleans-based publisher of Black Collegian and Black MBA magazines. That move, he says, was one of his most personally satisfying because he was able to leverage a Black-owned company that had been around for years and lift it to the next level.

With a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, Kataria had the experience and skills required to run a company, but his time on the tennis court also helped. During his stint in Lexington, a town without much ethnic diversity, he played tennis with a Black friend. That friend had a friend, Preston Edwards in New Orleans, who needed help raising funds to take his print-based publication, Black Collegian, online.

Kataria, 45, a native of India, knew well the struggles Black entrepreneurs face when it comes to securing bank or private funding to expand or leverage their businesses.  He thought he could help Edwards, and so did Edwards after the two met and talked at length. Eventually, Kataria moved to New Orleans, becoming president of Edwards’ company, which was renamed IMDiversity.com.

Kataria developed a business plan for the company and raised $3 million from two venture funds. “One of the funds was started by the [former] CEO of Gartner Group, which gave $1.5 million,” he says. “Another $1.5 million came from Stonehenge Capital in Louisiana.”

With that infusion, hiring took off, and IMDiversity’s staff grew from about a dozen to more than 60. The company’s sales skyrocketed 500%. For Kataria, it was, “A dream come true; me running a Black-owned company.” He held the job of president from April 1999 to December 2001. “It’s one of the best things I ever done in my life.”

To this day, Edwards still marvels at Kataria’s expertise in raising seed money. “He put together a prospectus for investors and introduced us to the venture capital community,” he says. “We grew tremendously over a year and a half period. …He fit in very well here.”

After leaving IMDiversity, Kataria took over the chairmanship of Diversity Inc., a leading publication on diversity and business. There, he positioned the company to meet the needs of emerging markets and developed new products and services, including extending the Diversity Inc. brand from a Web-based product into a glossy magazine that launched in November 2002. He was involved in packaging Diversity Inc, the magazine, from concept to print.

Kataria stayed at Diversity Inc. four years. Then Hurricane Katrina hit. And that changed a lot, especially his commitment to using good business practices to do good works. He decided the people of New Orleans, so devastated by the hurricanes, needed help. And one form of assistance he could deliver was jobs. Bringing business back to New Orleans was crucial if the city were to fully recover.

So Kataria set about trying to raise monies to help Black business owners hard hit by the hurricane and floods. His goal was to start a fund with $5 million to $10 million that would help small business such as restaurants and barbershops. But raising the funds proved difficult in a city so many citizens had fled. Even a prominent businessman like Edwards found it hard to get enough ney to rebuild his home.

Still determined to bring jobs back to New Orleans, Kataria and his friend and business partner Terrence Rice started Diversity Business Solutions in 2007. This time, though, no funds came from private equity or venture capitalists. Kataria and Rice self-funded DBS with their own money and contributions from friends. DBS, while still a small company, he says, has its sights on growth. The company is “growing organically” while Kataria and Rice prospect for outside funding.

“Yesterday, I was talking to one of the venture funds. To this day, it’s tough to get funded if you’re a minority- or Black-owned business,” he says.

DBS puts together Web sites based on job channels and uses sophisticated technology to up-sell listings that draw diversity candidates. Its main clients are newspapers, which DBS attracts by showing them the advantages of selling through its network of diversity sites for a better price point and fewer transactions. Network sites target African-American, Asian and Hispanic job candidates, Kataria explains. With DBS’s package, employers can reach people from different ethnic backgrounds and from multiple locations as opposed to only those in just one city. That business model works well, he says.

In addition to having a nationwide job network, DBS’s goal “is also to created white-collar jobs in New Orleans,” says Kataria, a single father who keeps a home in Southington, CT, where his three children live.

Still, the success of the company relies on getting funding, which Kataria steadfastly believes is made more difficult for him and Rice, who is Black, because funders have typically been reluctant to back minority-owned businesses. “If this was two White boys…they’ve have funding coming out the wazoo,” he says. “Oh, God, yeah.”

Kataria believes that doing great work will pay off. One thing he and Rice don’t want to do, he says, is promote diversity while not being the best at it because that would be “another thing to slap [them] in the face.”

What is working in his and Rice’s favor, though, is their knowledge of the media industry, an understanding of how financing works and having connections. “That’s the advantage of being in the industry for that long,” he says. “We are on our way to succeeding. New Orleans is not going to attract Fortune 500. They just can’t because of the schools and education issues. But they can attract smaller companies. …If you can show them a pilot of how white-collar jobs can be created and run, then the country can see what can happen with half a million-dollar funding.

“Everybody has a chance to do well. Funding helps. If you put 10 people around a table, five with funding, five without, the five with funding have a better chance. And if the five with funding are White people, then only White people are going to succeed. So we have to find channels to fund the people at minority companies.”

Every business dreams of leaving a legacy. These days, making it past your first year is tough enough. Many forward thinkers have ideas they hope will change the world, but hardly any will ever see their dreams come true. Hard work and focus is the vehicle that might get you there, but innovation is the gas necessary to keep your engine running.

Boston Consulting Group recently surveyed 1,060 executives and found some convincing facts about what are driving big businesses today. Innovation remains a top strategic precedence for many companies, with 72% of executives ranking it a top-three strategic priority. More than half of the executives were dissatisfied with returns on investments in innovation. Although blue-chip CEOs may be spending huge budgets on innovation, this shouldn’t mean small businesses cannot compete with them. Small businesses can adapt and react quickly, and often don’t get toppled in the deadly process of killing innovation with “no change” attitudes from risk-averse shareholders.

Donald Sheelen, an innovation consultant, has created and managed over $1 billion worth of innovative products. “Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization.” he emphasizes “Without it, not only is there no growth, but inevitably a slow death.”

Only two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, and just 44% survive at least four years, according to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association. Here are some innovation principles that every entrepreneur should consider if they don’t want to be another startup casualty.

Jump the next curve. Great innovators don’t try to do things 10% better; they try to do it 10 times better. Innovation is the act of introducing something new. The power of the web means startups no longer have to build global infrastructure to reach a worldwide market. This allows for companies like Google, eBay, Facebook, and YouTube to scale their businesses unconventionally quickly. They have jumped the next curve and invented new curves to jump on. They are reorganizing how society operates in brilliant and novel ways. It is their awareness of what’s upcoming that are allowing these young entrepreneurs to be worth billions.

So how can you start thinking like a great innovator? First, you must be versed on what are the latest innovations. The success elite are lifelong learners. Talk to your customers or potential markets and ask what they want. Consumer-centric innovation may be the most powerful way to raise a company’s innovation success rate because you’re producing exactly what your customer wants.

Get fresh eyes. Most entrepreneurs never think outside the box because they’re trapped under their own self-created glass ceiling. The busy daily grind with its built-in stress pollutes their natural creativity. Take the time to re-evaluate your goals with some fresh perspectives.

Start by switching roles. This is a good way to learn and understand what’s out there or in there. If you’re a manager, become an employee. If you’re the product manager, become the product. Change your perspective. This bit of role-playing can allow you to find new innovative ways to look at the same problem, and find a solution you never thought existed before.

Stuck with a creative block? Try beginning your day with Starbucks in one hand and a pen in the other. Build a daily routine brainstorming new ideas first thing each morning to get your creative mojo going. Before the hectic day starts is when you’re most creative and your mind is less cluttered and strained.

Swim in the blue ocean. In the groundbreaking book Blue Ocean Strategy, authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne say that a major focus should be on creating competitor-free market space. Unlike “red oceans,” which are well explored and crowded, “blue oceans” represent opportunity for highly profitable growth.

Take Cirque du Soleil, for example. It took an old circus model, which catered toward middle-class families, and created a phenomena focused entirely on an upper class Broadway-type audience. Cirque du Soleil eliminated the cotton candy and expensive circus animals. Instead, it rented high-class venues and crafted a themed storyline underlining its astounding acrobats and performers. It was able to reconstruct the market boundaries for an aged circus industry and has since entertained over 70 million people.

Start looking across time, alternative industries, or complementary products or services. Your goal is to find the customer values of today, then re-evaluate traditional outdated models and their old values. Are you after a market that is small enough that larger competitors aren’t already going after it, and big enough so that if you’re successful, you can reach critical mass and profitability? Once you’re on to something, you can start paddling in the open waters.

Think big, start small. If you’re going to change the world, you cannot do it with boring products or services. In the Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki suggests, “Your goal is to catalyze passion…the only result that should offend (and scare) you is lack of interest.” He also recommends you not doing it alone. Most successful companies are started and become successful with at least two “soul-mates.”

Your positioning and messaging should be simple, elegant, and deep. It must be easy enough that your grandmother would understand it, and intuitive enough for a fifth grader to figure out. If your business model cannot be described in less than 10 words, start over until it can.

Move swiftly. Busyness doesn’t create business. Don’t spend all your time trying to find the perfect business model and the perfect big idea. Marketing guru Seth Godin, discusses this in his book, The Big Moo: Stop trying to be perfect, and start being remarkable. Your initial goal isn’t for perfection. It just needs to be attractive to a large group of people.

Most businesspeople would suggest that you must understand your market and product very well, then go as fast as you can. Make as many mistakes early on and react quickly. This will be your best way to be able to compete with the business giants.

The revolution of forward-thinking innovators has just started. The race to build creative, innovative companies will be decided by who will choose to start and who will finish strong. Perhaps one day, more companies will be leaving a legacy after all.

Although experts in the diversity and inclusion arenas are not in 100% agreement about the role employee-affinity groups play in determining just how inclusive any given corporate organization really is or isn’t, it’s important to specifically examine their role, especially where the advancement of professionals from diverse backgrounds is concerned. Employee affinity groups are often highlighted as an important feature of a company’s commitment to diversity and positioned as a path toward advancement opportunities.

Once employed, talented professionals join employee-affinity groups and assume they provide access to leadership, a communication channel regarding key openings at the company; and a meeting place for colleagues with similar backgrounds or interests. Based on mixed experiences and findings, the question remains, Are affinity groups the mechanism leadership looks to in developing, identifying, and tapping talent for senior-level positions, or do they represent the equivalent of scheduled cultural exchanges and social gatherings with little impact on an individual’s success, recognition, or advancement?

The Spectrum

Employee-affinity groups certainly aren’t all the same. As with most programs borne out of corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives, their sophistication depends greatly on where a company sits on the diversity spectrum. Often, firms with a shorter history or less formal commitment to diversity may have fewer systems in place to make affinity groups a viable tool for talent retention and advancement. Companies with more history/experience will often host affinity groups that are more structured, heavily focused on business goals and representative of an active pool of talent to consider as the need to the best talent grows stronger each day.

Recently, The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a leading national Hispanic civil- rights organization, in partnership with Sodexo Inc. led an initiative to understand affinity groups’ membership, purpose, and outcomes across corporate America and to assess the impact these groups are having on Latino professionals. “Overall, we found that every group across the nearly 50 companies that responded was slightly different from one another,” says Simon Lopez, NCLR workforce development director. “It was clear that good intentions are what drive the creation and support of these groups, but that the ones with the most potential positive impact for the advancement of Latino professionals are those that focus on business bottom-line goals and are constructed to serve as talent pools for all levels.”

Many Faces

Respondents to NCLR’s research submitted more than 10 different options in response to the question, “What activities do your employee-affinity groups focus on?” Answers ranged from raising cultural awareness to promoting community service to conducting product testing to talent development. Given this wide scope, professionals seeking that next big break into leadership must carefully assess how and where they spend their limited time. Although helping to raise cultural awareness is certainly a priority, will hosting a booth in the atrium during Heritage Month help you meet your professional objectives? Further, in the true spirit of diversity and inclusion from a business standpoint, what is truly gained from recognition for your cultural background as opposed to recognition in the boardroom? The ideal is, naturally, a company that strikes a healthy balance between both.

Rolddy Leyva, senior director of diversity at Sodexo, notes, “Each day is an opportunity for us to leverage our employee-affinity groups for talent retention and development as well as for creating a more inclusive and open environment. It’s not an easy mission to manage, but it is possible to support meaningful programs related to specific cultures while keeping a hard focus on our need to keep and grow the best talent from all backgrounds.”

Networking to Advance

The NCLR initiative also highlighted how important employees consider affinity groups for networking purposes, with 100% of respondents noting that they are a networking vehicle. For ambitious, experienced, and highly-coveted professionals of diverse backgrounds, the real issue that needs to be addressed is, “Does networking as part of my company’s affinity group provide access to opportunity and leadership, or access to my peers and subordinates?” If getting ahead is the aim, an employee needs to critically evaluate how the existing affinity group can help or hinder that objective. By asking a few key questions during the interview process or once employed, it’s possible to determine whether it makes sense to invest time and energy in an employee affinity group if professional advancement is the main goal. These include:

• What is the affinity group’s mission statement? You will have a different experience participating in a group whose stated mission is to honor shared culture and promote its visibility within the company than a group whose stated mission is to identify, retain, and develop top talent for advancement.
• What systems or programs are in place to identify, retain, and develop talent through the affinity group? Digging deeper will get you past public relations positioning and into the real role of the group.
• Are there current leaders in management or executive ranks that were identified through the group and developed for their current roles? Ask to meet with them. If there aren’t any, chances are top talent isn’t developed from inside affinity groups.
• How is the group funded and structured? You want to know the budget, where it’s coming from, and who leads the group in front of leadership. This will help you understand who truly “owns” the group and how heavily the company is investing in its success.

The Point

Diversity and inclusion efforts sponsored by leading companies are continually evolving, and it’s critical that business leaders are held accountable to truly moving their cause forward. Employee-affinity groups represent opportunities that on the whole could be activated more broadly to benefit both employees and employers. In years past, it was acceptable to maintain an employee affinity group for the sole purpose of giving individual employees of like backgrounds an opportunity to interact. More recently, the aim has been to promote visibility of the cultures represented more broadly within the organization. Today, the goal should be centered on cultivating employee-affinity groups for enhanced professional opportunities. It will serve both the business bottom line and the diverse professionals at the forefront of today’s race for talent.

Jessica Priego Lopez is president of J Priego Communications. She can be contacted at Jessica@jpriego.com

There’s a vicious cycle of disappointment from each passing generation. Hopeful Asian- Americans face the dissatisfying reality that their dreams of corporate-management success are being overlooked by the outspoken and eccentric. Corporate America is playing a different game and most Asian-Americans aren’t even aware of the rules.

While Asian-American males are strongly represented as professionals in the workforce (23%), they’re underrepresented in executive managerial positions (14%). Asian-American females represent 17% of professional jobs, but are less likely to be represented as executives or managers (12%). In Silicon Valley, CA, where Asian-Americans comprise 30% of technology professionals, a 1993 study showed that they only make up 12.5% of managerial positions.

In a 1999 study by the University of California at Santa Barbara, psychologists identified 14 Asian values that come from Confucius’ teachings. They include collectivism, deference to authority figures, self-control, self-effacement and avoidance of family shame. Although these values do have their strengths in a team setting, they have also limited characteristics that conflict with career advancement. The study also revealed that these values were not found to significantly differ across each passing generation. This means that unless there is a new shift in thinking, the disappointment of the past will continue to dictate the future.

Education isn’t the only key

According to the 2002 data from the US Census Bureau, 44% of Asian-Americans over age 25 have graduated from college, compared to the 27% average for the U.S. population. About 25% of Stanford University undergraduates are of Asian descent, and Asians make up more than 40% of undergraduates at the University of California at Berkeley. In California, while Asian-Pacific Americans comprise 8% of all elementary students, they represent 17% of those in schools in the top 10%. Only 4 percent of Asians in those schools are in the bottom 10%. Far too often, Asians are pressured so heavily to enter certain professions, it may be at the expense of completely neglecting their own aptitudes, personalities, and, most importantly, passions.

Dan Goleman, in his book Working with Emotional Intelligence, calls “emotional intelligence” a greater value in American companies. Unfortunately, the unwavering emphasis on education in Asian culture overshadows the need to develop emotional intelligence. The American values of assertiveness, networking, and self-promotion by Asian-Americans are overwritten with “the loudest duck gets shot” Confucian way of thinking.

Bamboo Ceiling

There is some good news, however. In her book Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, author Jane Hyun gives deep insights on how Asian-Americans can finally get the well-deserved spots in the corner offices.

“The bamboo ceiling is clearly a nod to the term glass ceiling, a term that has historically been used to address barriers that women and multicultural professionals have faced in the workplace,” she says. “It is the combination of personal and organizational barriers that keep someone from advancing inside an organization. For organizations, it is both the lack of awareness about these differences and the resulting subtle biases that may occur. Another aspect of the bamboo ceiling is deeply imbedded cultural values and norms that impact Asian professionals’ interactions with others and cause others to make judgments about them.”

In many Asian countries, too much eye contact is a sign of disrespect and can come off as rude. The lack of consistent eye contact and a firm handshake may be misunderstood by recruiters and hiring managers.

Hyun suggests finding an experienced mentor. This cannot be stressed highly enough. Great mentors are very much linked to having a great network. As cliché as it sounds, in order to reach the top, it really does matter more who th

Speak your way up

To win more clients, gain recognition, and be selected for more interesting topics, you must be constantly looking for ways to make your accomplishments known. This can be done by taking on high-visibility corporate tasks overseen by senior management or by speaking up in meetings to establish credibility and connect you with others in the company.

Traditional Asian influences such as respect for authority (reluctance to question an expert), emphasis on harmony (backing down when challenged), can profoundly impact Asians’ effectiveness at work with co-workers, clients, managers, and subordinates. Asians need to ensure that their workplace behaviors aren’t being misinterpreted.

For example, the Asian employee’s deep-rooted value of respect for authority may lead colleagues to view him as a “yes man.” While you don’t want to be known as the perpetual devil’s advocate either, you should be able to question someone’s decision without disrespecting his or her authority. If you know the meeting will be a difficult one, you should prepare double-time by checking your sources and prepping the key participants prior to the day of the meeting.

Missing Out

Hyun thinks corporate America is missing out if it doesn’t figure out how to work with Asians. “If there are Asians opting out of firms before they reach their full potential because of a bad manager, or other cultural workplace misunderstanding, we lose out because we miss out on the unrealized contributions they could have offered,” she says. “As more young Asian- Americans enter corporations, I’d like to see more Asians use their cultural attributes as assets in their leadership — to be impacting their organizations positively with their skills, knowledge, and leadership capabilities.”

Perhaps, the future generations of Asian-Americans will be able to leverage the best of both cultures embedded in their upbringing and America to give Asians a chance. You can’t change your skin color, but you can disprove any preconceived prejudices by outwardly living up to your full potential. Some pioneers are already leading the way. It is up to the upcoming generations to break the unkind cycle of the past.

“The key to upward career mobility is self-awareness, recognizing what leadership gaps you need to fill in order to advance your career and taking the time to fill those gaps, and developing relationships with mentors who will help you navigate inside your organization,” says Hyun.