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The Resource Center has all the info you'll need From content to user feedback, the resource center has the information you need for every level of the entrepreneurial process.
This veteran entrepreneur and longtime AOL executive explains how "interdisciplinary thinking" continues to shape his approach to succeeding as an entrepreneur and in his overall professional and personal lives.
The entrepreneur who founded and ran The North Face (from its inception onward) tells his story about how his company was driven by the overwhelming need for innovation and a solid innovation strategy. To succeed in his industry, the author reveals his step-by-step method he used to innovate and eventually surpass the competition while building one of the industry's venerable brands.
Pam Marrone, founder of AgraQuest, relates the challenges and rewards she experienced in building a successful biotechnology company that specializes in ecologically friendly agricultural products.
Marissa leads the product management efforts on Google's search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google's first female engineer and led the user interface and webserver teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google's search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies- outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters- for 6,000+ people (employees plus family members and friends). Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to over 3,000 students. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education. Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Graduating with honors, Marissa received her BS in Symbolic Systems and her MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. Courtesy of Google, Bart Nagel
Ryan Phelan started DNA Direct in 2003 as a company that provides direct-to-consumer genetic testing and related consumer oriented genomic services. Phelan has been a strong consumer health advocate for the past 25 years, having started the first medical library for consumers in 1978. As Founding Director of Planetree, a nonprofit consumer health care organization, she helped create a national model for humanizing hospitals and a national model for providing health information to the public, the Planetree Resource Center. In 1995 she founded Direct Medical Knowledge (DMK). DMK was an extensive consumer health web site highly regarded for its unique content depth and innovative search interface. DMK developed proprietary software that enabled users to drill down through the most current medical literature and retrieve personalized health and medical information. As CEO of DMK, Ms. Phelan forged alliances with major medical institutions, national health care plans, publishers, and consumer groups. In 1999 Direct Medical Knowledge was acquired by WebMD, and DMK's content became the backbone of WebMD's consumer health site. Phelan is also a co-founder of the ALL Species Foundation, a global science initiative to discover all life on Earth in the next 25 years. In 2002, Phelan served as CEO for the ALL Species Foundation and continues her involvement today by serving on the Governing Board of Directors. She graduated from UC Berkeley. Courtesy of Strategic News Service, SF Chronicle
Ryan Phelan, founder and CEO of DNA Direct, shares her thoughts on entrepreneurship, both for-profit and not-for-profit, based on her experience launching groundbreaking healthcare initiatives that provide public access to comprehensive medical information and genetic testing.
"Learning to improve your negotiating skills is the highest and best use of your time," says Roger Dawson, a topic expert on negotiations. Dawson provides a series of strategies that entrepreneurs can use to improve their negotiating skills.
This negotiations expert provides do's and don'ts for closing a deal. One important set of tactics: going in with all the facts, understanding both parties' wants and needs, and adjusting strategies to succeed.
The challenges of working for both the talent the company represents and the clients who buy that talent are discussed by this veteran negotiator. The most important factors in her success: knowing the product and understanding what clients really need.
A due diligence checklist can provide a comprehensive assemblage of company information an entrepreneur needs in advance to negotiate effectively. This checklist is used by Corey Schwartz, entrepreneur and finance expert, in his negotiations to buy and sell companies.
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