Staying in touch with your customer base is essential for success in retail. Finish Line takes this concept one step further by actively seeking business ideas from teens on YouTube and incorporating their advice into the company’s strategic plans. Based on the YouTube videos, a Finish Line leadership panel selects three teams as Challenge finalists. Finalists are flown to Finish Line corporate headquarters in Indianapolis to present their findings to the company’s top executives.  Students from the winning team will be rewarded with an all-expense-paid trip to the DECA International Career Development Conference in Orlando, Florida, courtesy of Finish Line. Read more.

The IBJ’s video feature Inside Dish focuses on Kelties, a Hamilton County restaurant located in Westfield. Keltie Domina started her business as an etiquette-training school and has grown the restaurant into a lunch-and-dinner restaurant that relies on catering for close to half its total sales. Kelties has had to make some adjustments in 2010 to respond to the impacts the recession has had on her business. Click here to listen to Keltie as she talks about the evolution of her business.

The Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation, an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, announced a competitive search for up to 20 aspiring founders to launch high-growth, transformative companies in the education market.

Those selected for the Kauffman Education Ventures Program will be immersed in an intensive, hands-on program designed to catalyze the creation of companies with the potential to generate thousands of jobs and dramatic economic benefits.

Selected founders will receive six months of training and education on every aspect of running a business, personal coaching to bring their ideas to market and competitive compensation to focus full-time on their ventures. The program will include helping founders establish a brand, develop negotiation and presentation skills, go to scale, build financial models, validate the market, perform customer diligence, find funding, build a management team and develop a board of directors. Read more at http://tiny.cc/ifba6

EAC Educational Program

Indiana Business Incentives

When: Tuesday, September 28, 2010
7:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

Where:
Katz, Sapper, &  Miller
800 East 96th Street Suite 500
Indianapolis, IN 46240

Business incentives are available in Indiana. As a business owner, you need to know what opportunities exist and how to identify those that are available to your business. Join us in learning from experts from Katz, Sapper, and Miller about business incentive opportunities that may be available to your business.

You will gain an understanding of:

• Available programs
• The process to obtain available incentives
• The profiles of companies that successfully obtained incentives

Speakers
Tim Cook, Partner
Katz, Sapper, & Miller
State and Local Tax Department

Lisa Leventhal, Director
Katz, Sapper, & Miller
State and Local Tax Department

Registration is required but there is no fee to attend.  Click here for registration information.

Local Indianapolis business owner Lorraine Ball is on a mission and she needs your help. She is conducting a simple 12 question survey about how local business owners use and integrate social media into their daily business routines.

Her survey was inspired by the small business clients she works with every day. Much of her business is focused on building websites, and helping her clients use social media as part of their overall PR/Marketing strategy.  To get a better handle on how people use  social media, she is conducting a survey!

It is only 12 questions, (plus the profile) so it won’t take very long. And if you are interested check out the Roundpeg blog next week for the results, and add your email address and I will send the results to you.

Social venture philanthropy organization launches “Partners in Progress” for Indiana’s at-risk youth.
TechPoint Foundation, a leading venture philanthropy organization in Indiana, announces the launch of its corporate partnership program, Partners in Progress.  The program will directly connect Indiana’s technology companies with at-risk children and teens in their community.  Youth will develop the 21st century skills such as technology literacy, critical thinking, collaboration, and innovation skills necessary for success in a global, information economy.

Founded by successful entrepreneurs in the state’s burgeoning technology sector, the TechPoint Foundation serves as the primary philanthropic outlet for technology companies.  Its mission is to assist Indiana’s at-risk youth with 21st century skills development, investing and managing resources in community programs that have high-impact potential.  The Partners in Progress program allows those companies who depend on an educated population of knowledge workers to annually support the TechPoint Foundation mission and directly influence the future of their local economy.

“The launch of this program is a landmark for the corporate social responsibility initiatives of our local tech companies,” remarks Doug Cole, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Performance Assessment Network (PAN) and TechPoint Foundation Board Chair.  “There has never been a philanthropic opportunity in Indiana so well aligned with our industry’s interests.  I look forward to personally inviting my industry colleagues to participate.”

Through the program, TechPoint Foundation’s corporate partners will be formally recognized for their commitment to social responsibility year after year, and receive volunteer opportunities for their employees through the foundation’s grantee programs.  Such socially conscious initiatives and employer-sponsored avenues for community involvement are in high demand among today’s talented, high-potential recruits.

Corporate participation in the Partners in Progress program is available only to technology companies operating in Indiana who offer more than $1000 in annual support to the Foundation.  TechPoint Foundation maintains a 501(c)(3) status, allowing its Partners a tax benefit.

For information on becoming a TechPoint Foundation Partner in Progress, contact Laura Dodds at 317-634-2423 ext. 263, or  laura@techpointfoundation.org.

If you are a small business owner in Indianapolis, Dayton, OH, or Columbus, OH, please take a few minutes to fill out this quick survey.

The researcher behind this survey, Terri Lechton, is currently pursuing her doctorate in business with interest in entrepreneurship from the University of Maryland, University College.  She is conducting a survey on how entrepreneurs in the Midwest acquire financial, human, and information resources.  She is interested in seeing if homegrowns (those always living in the area), transplants (those new to the area), and boomerangs (those from the area who left and returned) approach and acquire resources differently.

The survey only takes about 5 minutes to complete.   She is hoping for 350 responses from Indianapolis business owners with less than 100 employees.  If you are interested in viewing the results, you can register in the results area. All of the data collection and analysis will be complete and sent to your inbox in September.

Local Indianapolis business owner Lorraine Ball is on a mission and she needs your help. She is conducting a simple 12 question survey about how local business owners use and integrate social media into their daily business routine.

The survey was inspired by the small business clients she works with every day. Much of her business is focused on building websites and helping her clients use social media as part of their overall PR/Marketing strategy.

She will be collecting the data all week, so if you are interested check out her blog next week for the results, and add your email address and the results will be sent to you.

The Entrepreneur’s Census was conducted in the spring of 2010. The census was designed to achieve three objectives:

1. Bring attention to the vital field of entrepreneurship and innovation
2. Record benchmarks for entrepreneurs throughout the United States
3. Compare the circumstances facing entrepreneurs in New York, Boston and Silicon Valley

The Entrepreneur’s Census provides some interesting findings. One finding, that relates to EAC’s work with youth, showed that 70% of respondents were either born in the city where their business is based, came for education, or came for a prior job.

Read more of the findings and recommendations from this current study of entrepreneurs. Click here for the full article.