Stone Soup of an Online Business


Archive for August, 2008

Business Blog

Posted by: pin on: 26 Aug, 2008

What is business Blog? Usually, it refers to the second website after the main official website of a business. Perhaps, Iit is a hard decision to replace official website with a Blog. Therefore, setting the business Blog sounds like more tolerate and ‘unofficial’ alternative.

Just look at Stemlife & Stemlife Blog or Malaysia Airlines and its Malaysia Airlines Blog, this growing trend means you will see more business owner adding Blog to their main menu in the website.

Google treat everyone as personal. That is why you are not asked to enter your company information. See, one can work for more than one company, or even own a few companies. How many times you are asked to answer your income range or your age or your area of interest in those drop down forms? It is, in another words of saying - your age and income will never change. Or, what is the point of asking?

Well, behind business Blog, I’m sure you can find someone, or a group of people who is managing it. They are real people and the business Blog is actually personal to them, so as the official website :)

MMU’s Technopreneurship Programs

Posted by: pin on: 26 Aug, 2008

Pei Lee visited my office last week, to check out how was Agnes and Eunice doing, both of them are in their 3-months internship training. We have a great talk. I shared with her about my plan to setup an incubator for young entrepreneurs. And, come to know that Pei Lee has published a paper related to the technopreneurship programs of MMU.

She is kind enough to send me a copy of the paper. Include here is the abstract of the paper. If you are looking for the fulltext paper, please check with Pei Lee.

Multimedia University’s experience in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model (Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the first three dimensions of the triple helix model. The focus of this paper is to study and develop a model for the role and functions performed by a university to nurture undergraduate student technopreneur development.

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the process of the technopreneurship program undertaken by Multimedia University (MMU) in 1999-2005. The analysis is based on the self-administered questionnaires, qualitative interviews, internal documents, web sites and direct observation. Electronic questionnaires are e-mailed to 24 founders of start-ups to explore their views on the entrepreneurial support structures in MMU.

The success of MMU in undertaking the technopreneurship programs is the result of the organization structure, management’s policies and priorities which are concentrated on creating and sustaining the necessary support structures to foster undergraduate student entrepreneurial activities.

A very interesting and useful information and impartial for new university planning to establish a culture of new enterprise creation within a university. It should be noted that though this is a study of various aspects of the success of MMU in undertaking technopreneurship programs, however, this will have an implication of how triple helix strategic model can be implemented in China.

Many universities have focused more on linkages of entrepreneurship and commercial-valued research involving academic staff and postgraduate students rather than undergraduate student entrepreneurship. It is believed that MMU is one of the few entrepreneurial universities which focuses on undergraduate students, who, from enrollment to graduation, are offered constant encouragement, training and support for their efforts to conceive and start up business enterprises. This paper is intended to share the experiences of MMU in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model. This paper is intended to share the experiences of MMU in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model with readers in China and out of China who have interest on the effective implementation of the university - government - industry strategic partnership.

Source: Teh Pei-Lee and Yong Chen-Chen (2008), “Multimedia University’s experience in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model”, Journal of Technology Management in China, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2008, pp. 94-108.

Funding for Online Business

Posted by: pin on: 24 Aug, 2008

You need nothing but Passion and a Blog :)

Inviting Young Technopreneur

Posted by: pin on: 23 Aug, 2008

I must admit, we don’t have golden finger - but just some down-to-earth experience which we have went through and which we think you might be interested.

You’ve chosen the off-the-beaten path. You’ve thousand of decisions to make from now on, from choosing a name for your Blog, to how to generate your first quotation. How important is your namecard design and is it worth to spend your bullet banging on billboard? How about business model and sustaining your business in the coming days…

Yes, my partner Yowchuan and I, wish to have a cuppa with you, sit down and listen to you. The reason for us to do so, because we believe through sharing, we learn - we learn from you too!

Arts and Culture @ The Podium

Posted by: pin on: 13 Aug, 2008

Various talented artists with work of art - paintings, sketches, handicrafts, jewelery, patch-works and independent T-Shirt designers, every Saturday and Sunday at The Podium, Menara Hap Seng, KL. Enjoy!

Value Your Team

Posted by: pin on: 11 Aug, 2008

My busineses friends always told me that the people working for them are their greatest assets. If you do a search, I bet you can find lot of companies here are including this in their corporate mission too. But how many of them are practicing this, in heart?

IKEA know how to make good use of free empty advertising space, and the real way of valuing their team members!

WordPress Web Hosting

Posted by: pin on: 07 Aug, 2008

Most of you could have signed up with a web hosting package and install the WordPress yourself. Updating on new WordPress release can be something a nice experience which I would like to do it myself as well.

Yet, businesses who want to focus on their business may not mind to pay few hundred dollars to get someone or their web hosting company to do this for them. Therefore, signing up a WordPress hosting that promise timely upgrade on new release of WordPress is important!

Multiple Blogs in single installation

I want a faster horse!

Posted by: pin on: 03 Aug, 2008

Steve Jobs said he never listens to people. People would have said they want a faster horse (Henry Ford). Companies do it more as gestures, more than mining people for their ideas.

Lot of time, people don’t know what they want until you have get put the final product in front of them! If Akio Morita listen to their customers, we will never get the Walkman today.

Why? Steve and Akio Morita doesn’t spend time to study their users, because they themselves are already the best user experience expert!

When asked why iTunes works? Steve explained that illegal download through is free but taking some time to find the right song. iTunes, provides a better User Experience and you are assured with song quality and reliability. We can’t talk someone to stop downloading songs illegally, but we can give you Carrot. “Our carrot is, better User Experience… and that will cost you USD1 only,” said Steve.

Recently, we are revamping our travel guidebook. It is not rocket science or any marketing research on age-group of our travelers, or any ‘convenient’ information to fill in the guidebook - it is User Experience, to spent less than 3USD before the trip.

I want a ‘car’!,” said Pin

Some other reading on User Experience:
How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer
Upload your picture to complete order?
What is the word?

Incubator for Startup

Posted by: pin on: 01 Aug, 2008

My partner, Yowchuan was one of the few entrepreneurs invited to MMU’s Centre for Commercialization and Technopreneur Development (CCTD) 8 years ago. Through it was merely a 300 sqf of space, but was already big enough for our dream to wonder far. Having the first office there, we never look back again.

If I’m not wrong, there are few incubators in Malaysia, check out the full list of MSC Malaysia status incubators. Looking back, some incubators are just like another MSC, both work like The Real Estate Corridor.

Not only this, some trying to confuse our technopreneur to make them believe that all big dream need some big funding. Yet, at many times, they can’t even tell you if your business model is right? You spent lot of your time attending entrepreneur-related talk and meet up with those ’successful’ businessman who shows you where they are now, but not how to get there!

Working with my interns over the years, I believe we have talented graduates for sure. They are lacking of confident, instead of funding and cubicle space. Talking about this, schools should actually allow them to pursue their dream as early as during their final year project stage, than working on those impractical project to look good in GPA/CPA. If they start earlier, they save more time and prepare themselves better before graduating!

What entrepreneurs want?

The physical space of where they work is never bigger than their dream. When you’re the only one to go off the beaten road after graduating, you need more than the incubator to realize your dream!

Long Way Home of a Web Developer
Decide Your Business Model Today!
Classified Companies
Google’s Web Design Company