International visitors spend almost $18 billion per year on business travel in Germany according to a recent study funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and published jointly by the BMWi and the Federal Association of the German Tourism Industry (BTW). As an industrial, scientific and economic powerhouse, Germany is one of the most popular destinations for the business traveller. For the U.S., Germany is an especially important business destination: In general, 19 percent of U.S. overseas travelers are traveling for business but in the case of U.S. travelers to Germany, business travelers account for 27 percent. Many businesses are attracted to Germany as a green meeting destination as the country is number one in renewable areas, including recycling and sustainable water technology.

Almost half of the total volume of business travel to Germany is made up of “promotable” business meetings – those that include incentives, conferences, events and trade fairs. “Promotable business travel from Europe to Germany advanced by seven percent to 5.5 million trips last year, making it a significant economic force in Germany’s inbound travel industry,” said Petra Hedorfer, Chief Executive Officer of the German National Tourist Board (GNTB), referring to preliminary data released by IPK International.

“Well done is better than well said.”

~Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American politician, Author, Inventor

Reema Khan, s.h.a.p.e.s’ founder and CEO, opened her first beauty salon in 2003. Inspired by the women who would drive from the suburbs to the North Side of Chicago to have their eyebrows threaded at her salon, Khan, a licensed cosmetologist, said she decided to open her first s.h.a.p.e.s Brow Bar at a local mall.

Since opening that first bar in 2004, s.h.a.p.e.s has grown to 62 locations in seven states.  One of those 62 locations is a franchise.

“I came to realize that in order to multiply the vision of financial success and keep the process of brow education, franchising appeared to be the most viable option,” said Khan.

The annual conference of the World Future Society will feature international speakers on subjects ranging from the environment to the economy and from technology to cultural transformation will enhance your understanding of the possibilities facing us all. The conference will be held July 27-29 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel in Toronto, Ontario. Contact the World Future Society to learn more.

A recent study from Carbonite, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARB), a leading provider of online backup solutions for consumers and small and medium sized businesses, revealed surprising responses from small business owners on how they prepare for a data disaster. The findings address a number of topics, from small businesses’ approach to backing up data to their confidence in their strategy for protecting against information loss.

According to the study, small businesses are using a variety of technologies to back up data including some antiquated methods that leave the backup process incomplete and susceptible to information loss. These technologies include external hard drives, USB/flash drives and CDs/DVDs. The data further revealed many businesses are using a combination of these antiquated technologies, which can make backing up even more complex and compound their risk for data loss. Such methods must be monitored manually and very frequently to ensure that the backups are current and protected. When multiple methods of backup are used, each must be managed, and careful records of where backed up data is stored needs to be maintained and checked to ensure the backup is complete.

Despite known risks, small businesses continue to choose a range of risky and unreliable technologies:

• Hard Drives are Proven to Fail: 50 percent use external hard drives, yet 20 percent backing up their business data indicated they started to do so because of a hard drive failure.
• USB/Flash Drives are Already Unreliable: 42 percent use USB/flash drives primarily because it is perceived as easy, yet only 6 percent believe USB/flash drives to actually be reliable.
• CDs/DVDs are Inconvenient and Risky: More than one-third use CDs/DVD drives to backup data, even though 62 percent feel they are inconvenient or risky.

“Although many small businesses are backing up their data, they’re using antiquated methods, such as USB/flash drives or CDs, which leave huge gaps and vulnerabilities. These simple solutions may be relatively easy to set up, but they require ongoing supervision to ensure they are performing, and can distract from other work,” said Peter Lamson, senior vice president of small business for Carbonite.

“Small businesses are creating new, priceless data every minute of every day and they can’t afford to be unprotected. Low cost, automated and easy to use methods are now mainstream, so there’s no reason for small businesses to be spending time manually managing backups, when they could spend that valuable time focused on their business instead,” Lamson continued.

Short term savings leave data vulnerable, throw time and money out the window

Small businesses stay competitive by keeping costs down, but when it comes to backup, cutting costs may mean using products with limited coverage and leaving SMB data at risk. Carbonite research found:

• Twenty-one percent of small businesses using online backup were using a free product. Since free online backup services are typically capped at two gigabytes, small businesses using these methods could be vulnerable to data loss.
• Some small businesses already recognize the limitations of USB/flash drives, which are often considered low-cost. Twenty-four percent of small businesses using this method noted USB/flash drives do not work well for backup specifically because they have limited storage space.

“Our study also found that one in five small businesses don’t know how much data they have, so it’s unlikely they have the right solutions in place. Backup solutions like USBs or free solutions may not back up all of a business’ data, and so a business must ration their backup or choose what they want to safeguard,” said Lamson. “Small businesses need to ensure they use a backup solution that has the capacity and capability to keep all of its data protected.”

When it comes to the time invested in and the tech support used for backing up, 22 percent of small businesses surveyed even pay for outside tech assistance. Notably, 40 percent of those who manage the process in-house spend more than an hour per week backing up their company data – with six percent spending more than five hours per week. Both approaches indicate that small businesses are losing time and money to support backup strategies that do not match their needs, especially since there are a number of online, automated backup services available that cut these expenses and eliminate time spent on this task.

Backup methods that are not automated require small businesses to manually back up their data, which means many SMBs don’t back up on a daily basis. Carbonite research shows only 24 percent have backed up their data in the past day, and 24 percent haven’t backed up their data within the past week – leaving the companies vulnerable for information loss.

Carbonite’s online backup solution runs on both the Windows and Mac platforms. The company has backed up nearly 200 billion files, restored more than 7 billion files and currently backs up more than 300 million files each day. For more information, please visit www.carbonite.com,

And even that may understate MIT’s powerful entrepreneurial impact, said MIT Sloan Professor of Management of Technology Edward Roberts, founder and chair of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and co-author of the study with his former MIT Sloan doctoral student Charles Eesley, now a faculty member at Stanford University. “This report quantifies the significant impact of MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports firm start-ups,” he said. “It documents the dramatic economic impact of MIT alumni, students, staff, and faculty who have formed new enterprises over the past 50 years.”

The report is based on one of the largest surveys of entrepreneur alumni ever conducted, he said. The effort began in 2001 when MIT sent a questionnaire to nearly 106,000 living alumni. Two years later, a follow-up survey focused on the respondents who had founded one or more companies. The researchers were then able from the data gathered to estimate the scale of MIT’s role in creating companies and jobs, concluding that at the end of 2006, living MIT alumni had created 25,800 still active companies that employed 3.3 million people and generated annual global revenues of nearly $2 trillion, “producing the equivalent of the 11th-largest economy in the world.” A critical additional finding is that those companies that were based upon technology drawn from MIT and other universities generated 1.7 million of those jobs and about $1 trillion of the total revenues. An additional million jobs and $700 billion in global revenues came from MIT-alumni firms that were based upon technologies from industry and government, with only 15 percent of the economic impact arising from non-technical companies.

The authors acknowledge some degree of uncertainty in the economic estimates. “But the trends in the numbers are clear,” said Roberts and Eesley. “More entrepreneurs emerge out of each successive MIT graduating class and they are starting their first companies sooner and at earlier ages. Over time, the number of multiple companies founded per MIT entrepreneurial alumnus has also been increasing, thereby generating dramatically increased economic impact per graduate.”

According to the survey, Massachusetts is the biggest beneficiary of firms created by MIT alumni, with an estimated 6900 MIT alumni firms headquartered in Massachusetts alone, employing about 1 million people, followed in order by California, New York, Texas, and Virginia. Though fewer than 10 percent of incoming MIT freshman are from Massachusetts, nearly 40 percent of the software, biotech, and electronics companies founded by MIT graduates are located in the state. “Not only do MIT alumni, drawn from all over the world, remain heavily in Massachusetts but their entrepreneurial offshoots benefit the state and country significantly,” the study found. “Greater Boston in particular, as well as northern California and the Northeast, broadly, is home to the largest number of MIT alumni companies.”

The survey also found that “a large fraction” of the foreign students drawn to MIT remain the United States. “Well over half of the firms created by foreign students who graduate from MIT are located in the United States, generating most of their economic impact in this country. Moreover, the foreign students are even more likely than domestic MIT students to become entrepreneurs, and their companies are far more likely to engage in manufacturing, spawning significant economic benefits for their locales and this country”, Roberts emphasized.

While the study is centered on MIT, it offers other institutions a baseline against which to measure their own entrepreneurial strengths, said Roberts. “MIT is more unique and unusual in the programs it offers and in its historical culture of entrepreneurship. But MIT provides a benchmark by which other institutions can gauge the economic impact of their alumni entrepreneurs.”

Douglas Tan, managing director of Steven Tan Russell Bedford PAC, comments on World Bank Paying Taxes survey.

A recent World Bank survey has confirmed Singapore’s position as the world’s best business environment – with one of the easiest tax compliance regimes in the world.

The annual World Bank Doing Business report assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 183 economies, ranking each on the basis of various criteria including ease of starting a business, insolvency resolution, cross-border trade and the ease (or otherwise) of paying taxes. Russell Bedford member firms have contributed to the report’s Paying Taxes survey since 2009, with 51 member and correspondent firms contributing data for the 2012 report on tax regulation, compliance and the real tax burden on businesses and entrepreneurs.

With the country ranked in first place in terms of its overall business environment, this year’s Paying Taxes survey ranks the country in fourth place for ease of paying taxes. Businesses in Singapore are required to make only five separate tax payments per year – among the lowest for any economy in the world. Moreover, they spend an average of only 84 hours per year in doing so – less than half the time spent by businesses in OECD high-income economies (186 hours per year) and significantly below the East Asia and Pacific average of 215.

Value added tax and corporate income tax entail the greatest compliance burdens, at 40 and 34 hours, respectively. Employer-paid social security contributions take only 10 hours per year – in contrast to the 55 hours per year necessary in the United States.

Douglas Tan, managing director of Steven Tan Russell Bedford PAC commented, “It is always a pleasure to see the competitiveness of Singapore’s business environment confirmed by such an authoritative survey. The country’s attractiveness applies as much to new business start-ups as to multinational businesses and international investors; the ease of business incorporation and tax registration has continued to deliver real benefits in retaining our leading position as a country for doing business.”

For further information, contact Douglas Tan on +65 6222 7088 or Kempton Bedell-Harper on +44 20 7410 0339. Alternatively, visit the websites at www.strb.com.sg and www.russellbedford.com.

According to results of the 2012 ICF Global Coaching Study, professional coaches that belong to one or more professional associations generate on average $49,700 USD in annual income from coaching alone. Conversely the average annual coaching revenue among those who do not belong to any associations was $40,000 USD.

“This study reveals the potential of coaching associations to contribute to the viability and economic well-being of the profession,” explained ICF Global President Janet M. Harvey. “We are seeing a new level of understanding about the value of professional associations and how they can strengthen coach confidence, improve coaching collaborations, and offer coaches multiple networking opportunities.”

Members of a professional association were also shown to have a higher fee for a one-hour coaching session. Of those with at least one association reported an average hourly fee of $240 USD, versus $200 for those who don’t belong to a professional association.

The amount of professional coaches who responded to the survey and are currently members of a professional coaching association is quite large, with around 77 percent of all coaches saying they hold membership in at least one association. The 2012 ICF Global Coaching Study also asked coaches to identify what professional associations or organizations they hold membership with – the International Coach Federation was the highest chosen selection, earning 64 percent of respondents.

McIntosh was originally founded in Silver Springs, Maryland, 1949. The current Binghamton, NY factory, constructed in 1956, continues to grow with the company. McIntosh created the legendary MT10 Turntable along with a number of tube amplifiers.

Since 1961, the legendary McIntosh MC275’s characteristically smooth, pleasing, and powerful sound has been the top choice of music lovers worldwide. Timeless emotional connection with the music delivered. The 50th Anniversary Limited Edition MC275 tube power amplifier is the perfect collectors item.