Vistas: Geri Stengel’s Blog: Entrepreneurs

Most Americans – 71 percent – trust small businesses more than they trust their government, their preacher, their teacher, or the nightly news, according to a very dense report issued in April by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. 

A recent article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, The Sure Thing: How entrepreneurs really succeed has me steaming!

Gladwell's thesis is that entrepreneurs are not daring risk takers – they only bet on sure things, he says – and that they are predators. As an adjunct professor who teaches entrepreneurship at The New School and as a successful serial entrepreneur myself, I say that's a bunch of malarkey.

A strong sense of ethics is essential to social enterprises, corporate social responsibility, and any business, small or large, that wants the respect and loyalty of their customers. Ethics is an important part of doing well while doing good, so Ventureneer has joined forces with Business Ethics, the Magazine of Corporate Responsibility.

The video is the work of creative director Janet Giampietro, with motion graphics by Gestalters, llc. and audio production by Al Fritsch.

I also want to give another shout out to Grasshopper whose video, Entrepreneurs Can Change the World, inspired this one. They used a video to inspire interest in starting a company or nonprofit (yes, for me nonprofits are as entrepreneurial as for profits). Ventureneer uses its video to let small business owners and nonprofit executives know that they can’t do it by themselves and assistance is available if you know where to look.

Every small business and nonprofit leader needs outside assistance so share the video with your network as reminder to them to continual build their support system.

Not into naming things, I’d still like to hear from you. Tell me what you think about the video and who's in your support system.