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Incubators, accelerators, business developers, startup weekends, coaches, consultants… Do these terms confuse you?  Some people use these interchangeably; others make a distinction that’s important to them.  Where do these business efforts fit in relation to a consulting group like IBEC? First, we define IBEC Ventures as a consulting group offering a variety of coaching, mentoring, training […]

Our blog content often focuses on business–related themes such as ethics, poverty, innovation, business leadership, management etc.  But mission is also a fundamentally important part of a Kingdom business.  IBEC helps start and grow businesses which become profitable and sustainable, create jobs and share the “Good News” of Jesus. Sometimes I get a little angry

Last week we listed six things entrepreneurs do and gave examples from Business As Mission (BAM) businesses we know.  This week we will look at five things they do not do – in and out of the BAM world.  Steve Tobak of Fox Business (and author of Real Leaders Don’t Follow) suggests in a March

While on a recent flight I picked up the Spring 2015 issue of Startups magazine.  An article by Marcia Layton Turner caught my eye: Get started: 12 signs you’ve got what it takes to start your own business. You can read the online version (12 Signs You Have an Entrepreneurial Mindset) in full on Entrepreneurs

I have recently been listening to Clay Christensen (Harvard Business School) describe his idea of disruptive innovation.  He calls it a theory and has some amazing examples from the steel and auto industry, tech examples and even education.  The definition below comes from Christensen’s website which I highly recommend. “Disruptive innovation, a term of art

An indelible image in my mind while growing up in northern Canada was of grown men sleeping in our town’s Greyhound bus station with no place to go and nothing to eat.  Years later while living in tropical Brazil our family saw poverty as we had never seen it before.  As I have traveled the

We have written some thoughts in recent blogs about ethics, corruption and bribery.  Because IBEC serves businesses in countries that are the most corrupt in the world (see www.transparency.org), we hear stories like this from time to time.  This story gives a glimpse of what it is like to make ethical decisions in the real-life

On Dec 29, 2014 I wrote about being on the lookout for that big opportunity, something retired Harvard Business School professor John Kotter calls The Big Opportunity (TBO).  It is a window into a winning future that is realistic, emotionally compelling and memorable.  In business it can be new markets, advances in technology, new products,

  Last week I proposed the Noonan definition of a bribe as “an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised” (The History of Bribery). That definition then begs the question of what is proper and improper.  Considering biblical culture and law, our own culture and law and the host culture

To pay a bribe or not to pay a bribe? Is that really a question? Today I will expand on an important issue that I began in my February 1, 2015 blog, Ethics and integrity in cross cultural business. In it I referred to a rather lengthy document on the subject of ethics and integrity in