A grant opportunity for entrepreneurial mothers…

Pleased to be able to tell you about the launch of the Huggies® MumInspired® Grant Program . Huggies want to take your innovative parenting ideas and turn them into a business reality. Huggies will be awarding 5 grants of $20,000 to the mums with the best ideas that nurture the relationship between mum and child by making their lives easier. Ideas need to be suitable for any stage from pregnancy up to 4 years old. That’s $100,000 in funding available!

Your idea could be just that, an idea! Or it may be that you have already set-up the business on a small scale and need some advice and funding to take it to the next level. Either way, Huggies can’t wait to hear your ideas. You will need to complete a MumInspired submission form and submit your idea between 15th March and 1st May 2011. Be sure to check out the MumInspired pages on our website too as they contain lots of information and resources on setting up and starting your own business. We also feature the stories of the Mums who have been awarded grants in the US so if you’re unsure as to whether to submit an idea, reading their life changing stories may be just the inspiration you need to do it!

Also, pop a reminder in your diaries now as Huggies will have a Celebrity Mum available on Thursday 17 March from 1-2pm on our Huggies Facebook page for a live chat! She will be ready and eager to answer all your questions about the MumInspired® Grant Program as well as anything else you may want to ask her.

Win yourself a $20,000 grant...

5 rules on Cultivating Power…

Here are some commonsense rules to let you get out of your own way and thrive in today’s business world.

By Jeffrey Pfeffer, contributor to Fortune

Commonsense, yet often violated, rules about power that can help make you more successful—and, even better, equip you to cope with today’s organizational realities.
Click here to read the full article

1. You need to take care of yourself…

2. Companies (and many people) worry more about what you can do for them in the future than what you have done for them in the past…

3. Perception is reality…

4. Don’t worry about what comes “naturally”…

5. Stop worrying about what others think about you…

For details, click here

How Mars Built a Business…

Launching a business selling customized candies was risky and required a series of internal innovation moves by Mars executives.
Great learning for all of us

By Jessie Scanlon for Bloomberg Businessweek

“There is little reason for an individual to have a computer in their home,” Ken Olsen, the president and founder of the Digital Equipment, famously said in 1977. As Olsen’s quote suggests, predicting demand for new, innovative products and services can be difficult, in part because many of the traditional methods of market testing—using historical data to forecast sales, for instance, or asking customers in a focus group to compare a new product with an existing, competing one—aren’t well-suited to the innovation process.

This was the dilemma that Dan Michael, then R&D director for Mars’ M&Ms brand, faced in 2000. He and his research team at the advanced R&D lab in Hackettstown, N.J., had an idea: to make customizable M&Ms printed with the word or image of a customer’s choosing.

In 2006, Mars’ My M&Ms experiment became a formal business unit called Mars Direct. Famously secretive, the company won’t share sales data, although Meyer, the Northeastern professor, wrote in his 2007 book, The Fast Path to Corporate Growth, that soon after the public launch “sales had surpassed $10 million and continued to accelerate.” The product was launched in Europe in 2007 and will soon be introduced in Australia.

What can executives learn from Mars’ approach to marketing an innovative product? read on

Employ Contractors? READ THIS…

and it won’t matter what size you are…

Organisations engaging contractors should be on notice.

With Unions pushing the Federal Government to limit the number of independent contractors, on the basis that contractors are disadvantaged and better placed in traditional employee/employer roles with full entitlements, many organisations may be forced to put contractors on the payroll.

Putting contractors on the payroll means organisations have to foot the bill for all employment costs such as PAYG, superannuation, annual leave, etc Contractors may lose better pay rates, tax advanatges and the flexibility in their work… read on

Contractor Double Jeopardy” by Brad Twentyman for Human Capital magazine…

Learning from Lionel Logue, The King’s Speech…

The latest from aCE talentNET consultant Elliot Epstein of Salient Communication…

SPOILER ALERT:
If you haven’t seen the Geoffrey Rush/Colin Firth movie The King’s Speech yet, then I recommend you go and see it and be aware that this article will disclose its characters and plots.

The King’s Speech has some great lessons for us in how to sell as well as consult and advise senior level clients.

This true story revolves around two key characters, King George VI and Lionel Logue, an unorthodox Australian Speech Therapist.

The King reluctantly ascends the throne after his brother runs away with Mrs. Simpson (you remember the story or were you staring at that cute girl/boy in class when this piece of history was being taught).

The King has an awful stammer which is not a great presentation technique when you’re about to galvanise the nation with your words to face the onslaught of World War 2.

After feeble and failed attempts by so called ‘experts’ to remedy the King’s stammer, he is dragged by his wife (the late Queen Mother) to see the odd Antipodean, Lionel Logue.

Does any of this sound familiar so far? Companies that have tried in vain to solve important problems despite numerous attempts with four or five suppliers, suddenly arrive at your office. Now what do you do? read on…

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