Ophra just emailed me (well, not just me) and asked for what topics she might focus on in her magazine and future TV shows. Here's what I sent her:
I suggest that you do a show called "Do Businesses Start the Way the SBA (Small Business Administration) says they should start?"
Dr. Amar Bhide www.bhide.net has written a book that the publisher of Inc. Magazine has said is the most important book ever written about business startup, but very few employees of the Small Business Administration have ever read it. Dr. Bhide's research has shown that successful businesses don't start the way that the SBA says they should, with formal market research and formal strategic planning.
In 1993 I was inspired by Dr. Bhide's work to write a little booklet on startup that I sold for years through local book stores, and I started holding a weekly meeting for people who were interested in business creativity.
You can see the booklet and a link to the group (that I now call the IDEA Cafe) on www.JohnWren.com.
It really does seem to me that this is a big, big story that just doesn't get covered by the business press. The SBA was started in 1954, what has it really done to small business in America? We used to be a nation of shopkeepers, we are rapidly becoming a nation of clerks working for big corporations.
I'll let you know what I hear back from Ophra.
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