Category: Entrepreneurship

Regulations and Bureaucratic Inefficiency May Kill Restaurant

(p. A22) To begin with, although the B&H Dairy Restaurant on Second Avenue in Manhattan now hangs by a thread, no one was hurt there on March 26 [, 2015], the day that three buildings on the same block were leveled by a gas explosion.
. . .
“On the third day after the explosion, people from the building department and Con Edison came together,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “They inspected the place, upstairs, downstairs, the pipes, the basement. They told me, ‘You are O.K., you should be fine, no problem.’ ”
That changed, he said, in the charged days that followed, as it emerged that apparently illegal alterations to the gas lines had been made in one of the buildings down the street.
The original inspector returned, he said, and told him that another inspection was going to happen in a couple of days. “He said, ‘You’re not going to pass that inspection. Because of what happened next door, I don’t want to be responsible for the future,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said.
All of the gas piping in the building has to be replaced, a job the landlord has taken on, though it is not clear what deficiencies it had. The Buildings Department file for 127 Second Avenue shows that there were no open violations on the premises in March, and none now.
After questions were put four times to the city on Thursday about the nature of the problems with B&H’s operation, a spokesman for the mayor said the administration was trying to help small businesses affected by the explosion, including the restaurant.
In B&H, Mr. Abdelwahed said, the inspector noted that his stove had five burners, but the plans on file showed only four. “He required me to correct it on the plan,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “Originally it was four. I don’t know how it came to be five. It’s not an issue. Where was an inspector before all this? You’re trying to show you’re working?”
. . .
“He told me, ‘You have to change the fire system,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said of the inspector. “Of course, I had a fire suppression system all the time, inspected. I told him, ‘I am going to go out of business.’ He said: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’ They don’t want to be responsible for anything.”
Because the fire suppression system was going to jut into the backyard, Mr. Abdelwahed had to apply for permission from the city’s Landmarks Commission as the block is part of a historic landmark district. Only after that approval was granted could his contractor apply for a building permit.
“What’s killing them is the lag time,” said Mr. Reynolds, who is organizing crowdfunding support for the restaurant. Bernadette Nation, an official with the city’s Department of Small Business Services, has cut red tape in getting permits issued, and their story has been covered on New York 1 and by many blogs.

For the full story, see:
JIM DWYER. “About New York; Unharmed by a Gas Explosion, but Choked by the Red Tape That Followed.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 10, 2015): A22.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added. The quote from Mr. Reynolds in the last passage above, appears in the print version of the article, but not in the online version of the article.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 9, 2015.)

Cloud Profits Give “Amazon Cover to Plunge into New Projects”

Jeff Bezos is what I call a “project entrepreneur”: he uses profits from earlier projects to fund new projects.

(p. B12) When it comes to investment, Amazon.com no longer has to stop to take a breath. And that is making it an even more formidable rival to bricks-and-mortar retailers.

The e-commerce giant has reported minimal profits in its 19-year history as a public company as it has pursued a pattern of near-endless investment. Amazon has plowed money into expanding its warehouse and delivery infrastructure and branching into new markets such as grocery, music, online video and, most recently, apparel.
In the past, Amazon has occasionally chosen to take a quarter here and there to press pause on that investment. That had the effect of reassuring the market that it could immediately be profitable if it ever chose to stop.
. . .
The protective shield of the cloud seems to be giving Amazon cover to plunge into new projects at an even more rapid clip than it has in the past.

For the full story, see:
MIRIAM GOTTFRIED. “Amazon Cloud Profit Sparks Retail Storm.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 21, 2016): B12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 20, 2016, and has the title “Amazon’s Cloud Cover Makes It a Bigger Threat.”)

“Students Are Hungry to Make an Impact”

(p. B2) “Today’s students are hungry to make an impact, and we have to be responsive,” said Gordon Jones, the dean of a new College of Innovation and Design at Boise State University in Idaho and the former director of Harvard’s Innovation Lab.
Yet campus entrepreneurship fever is encountering skepticism among some academics, who say that start-up programs can lack rigor and a moral backbone.
Even a few entrepreneurship educators say that some colleges and universities are simply parroting an “innovate and disrupt” Silicon Valley mind-set and promoting narrow skill sets — like how to interview potential customers or pitch to possible investors — without encouraging students to tackle more complex problems.
“A lot of these universities want to get in the game and serve this up because it’s hot,” Mr. Jones said. “The ones that are doing it right are investing in resources that are of high caliber and equipping students to tackle problems of importance.”
. . .
. . . the quick start-up workshops offered on some campuses can seem at odds with the traditional premise of liberal arts schools to educate deliberative, critical thinkers.
“Real innovation is rooted in knowledge and durable concern and interest, not just ‘I thought of something that nobody ever thought of before,'” said Jonathan Jacobs, who writes frequently about liberal education and is the chairman of the philosophy department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York. “That’s not educating people, frankly.”
And at least a few professors of entrepreneurship say that some universities are not ensuring that students learn the fundamentals of starting, running and sustaining a business.

For the full story, see:
NATASHA SINGER. “Colleges Rush to Embolden Entrepreneurs.” The New York Times (Tues., DEC. 29, 2015): A1 & B2 (sic).
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 28, 2015, and has the title “Universities Race to Nurture Start-Up Founders of the Future.”)

Steady-State Stagnation Is Not an Option

Some environmentalists advocate an end to economic growth. Inside economics, and in the broader world, a heated debate has considered whether an economy can long stagnate in a steady-state. The idea that it can, is captured in the circular flow diagram that has been a fixture of many introductory economics textbooks for many decades. I argue that without the dynamism that is achieved by innovative entrepreneurs, long-term stagnation is not an option. Exogenous events, such as earthquakes, will always come along to disturb the steady-state. And when they do, only entrepreneurs can restore the steady-state. If there are no entrepreneurs, there will be decline. If there are entrepreneurs, they will not stop at the steady-state; they will seek progress. The choice is forward or backward. Long-term steady-state stagnation is not an option.

(p. 10) SANKHU, Nepal — As the anniversary of Nepal’s devastating earthquake came and went last week, Tilakmananda Bajracharya peered up at the mountainside temple his family has tended for 13 generations, wondering how long it would remain upright.

. . .
Many people here pin their hopes on promises of foreign aid: After the disaster, images of collapsed temples and stoic villagers in a sea of rubble were beamed around the world, and donors came forward with pledges of $4.1 billion in foreign grants and soft loans.
But those promises, so far, have not done much to speed the progress of Nepal’s reconstruction effort. Outside Kathmandu, the capital, many towns and villages remain choked with rubble, as if the earthquake had happened yesterday. The government, hampered by red tape and political turmoil, has only begun to approve projects. Nearly all of the pledged funds remain in the hands of the donors, unused.
The delay is misery for the 770,000 households awaiting a promised subsidy to rebuild their homes. Because a yearly stretch of bad weather begins in June, large-scale rebuilding is unlikely to begin before early 2017, consigning families to a second monsoon season and a second winter in leaky shelters made of zinc sheeting.
. . .
. . . , some visitors who came here to assess the reconstruction expressed shock at how little had been done.
. . .
“It has been a horrible year,” said Anju Shrestha, 36, whose shed stands on a site that once held a three-story brick house.
A neighbor, Kanchhi Shrestha, guessed her age at about 75, based on a major earthquake that occurred two years before she was born. She pulled her skirt up to show feet splotchy with raw sores.
“I will die in this shelter if they do not give me money,” she said. “I have nothing to eat.”
However, she added, it would be inappropriate for a person like her to demand assistance from Nepal’s government.
“We cannot scold the government,” she said. “If the government provides, we will fold our hands and tell them, ‘You are God.’ “

For the full story, see:
ELLEN BARRY. “A Year Later, Nepal Is Trapped in the Shambles of a Devastating Quake.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., May 1, 2016): 10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 30, 2016, and has the title “A Year After Earthquake, Nepal’s Recovery Is Just Beginning.”)

Plastic Buttons Replaced Seashell Buttons, but Technology Can Be Restored

In What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly has made the point that most obsolete technologies remain available to satisfy nostalgia, or for more practical uses, if the need arises. Below is another example.

(p. C27) In a tan outbuilding overlooking a pond in northeastern Connecticut, equipment for turning seashells into buttons has lain fallow for nearly eight decades. The building’s owner, Mark Masinda, a retired university administrator, is working to transform the site into a tourist attraction.

In the early 1900s, his grandfather William Masinda, a Czech immigrant, supervised a dozen button makers in the building, which is on a rural road in Willington. They cut, drilled and polished bits of shells imported from Africa and Australia to make “ocean pearl buttons” with two or four holes. The area’s half-dozen button factories supplemented the incomes of families struggling to farm on rocky terrain.
The Masinda operation closed in 1938, as plastic flooded the market. “The equipment he had just couldn’t make the transition,” Mr. Masinda said.
. . .
Mr. Masinda is planning to reactivate the equipment and open the site for tours by . . . spring [2016].

For the full story, see:
EVE M. KAHN. “Antiques; Restoring a Button Factory.” The New York Times (Thurs., DEC. 3, 2015): C27.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 3, 2015, and has the title “Antiques; Yale Buys Collection of Scattered Medieval Pages; Restoring a Button Factory.”)

The Kelly book mentioned above, is:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

New Fuel Cell Efficiently Both Sequesters Carbon Dioxide and Produces Energy

(p. B1) For years, FuelCell Energy has been considered a company to watch. Its technology promised to help economically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which could help combat climate change. The Danbury, Conn., company might be able to make a difference, experts said, if only it had a partner with really deep pockets.
Now it has one.
In an agreement announced on Thursday [May 5, 2016], Exxon Mobil said it had tightened an existing relationship with FuelCell in hopes of taking the technology from the lab to the market.
. . .
The company’s fuel cells are already used to provide clean energy in about 50 locations around the world but without a connection to fossil-fuel power plants, as envisioned in the new agreement.
The fuel cells use a high-temperature molten carbonate salt mixture. Carbon dioxide flows into the fuel cell and emerges in a concentrated form that is ready for storage.
It is this idea of matching up power plants, which produce carbon dioxide, with fuel cells that are hungry for it that led to a collaboration between Exxon Mobil and FuelCell that started more than four years ago.
The result, at least so far in the laboratory, is that the fuel cells effectively isolate and compress the carbon dioxide while producing enough power to more than make up for the energy cost of capturing the carbon.

For the full story, see:
JOHN SCHWARTZ. “Exxon in Deal with Company to Advance Carbon Capture Technology.” The New York Times (Fri., MAY 6, 2016): B2.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 3, 2016, and has the title “Exxon Mobil Backs FuelCell Effort to Advance Carbon Capture Technology.”)

Neurosurgical Establishment Waited Decade to Adopt Jannetta’s Cure

(p. C6) Dr. Peter J. Jannetta, a neurosurgeon who as a medical resident half a century ago developed an innovative procedure to relieve an especially devastating type of facial pain, died on Monday [April 1?, 2016] in Pittsburgh.
. . .
“This was a condition that had been documented for a thousand years: There are references in the ancient literature to what was originally called ‘tic douloureux,’ ” Mark L. Shelton, the author of “Working in a Very Small Place: The Making of a Neurosurgeon,” a 1989 book about Dr. Jannetta, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “People knew of this unexplained, very intense, episodic facial pain but didn’t know the cause of it.”
. . .
In the mid-1960s, Dr. Jannetta made a striking discovery while he was a neurosurgical resident at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dissecting a set of cranial nerves for a class presentation, he noticed something amiss: a tiny blood vessel pressing on the trigeminal nerve.
“It came to him as something of a flash of insight,” Mr. Shelton said. “He saw this blood vessel literally impinging on the nerve so that there was actually a groove in the nerve where the vessel pressed.”
What if, Dr. Jannetta wondered, this were the source of the nerve damage? Though his insight is universally accepted today, it was novel to the point of subversion in the 1960s.
“The idea that a very small blood vessel, the diameter of a mechanical pencil lead, could cause such outsize pain didn’t resonate with people at the time,” Mr. Shelton said.
. . .
If the vessel was a vein, it could simply be cauterized and excised. If it was an artery, however — a more essential structure — it would, Dr. Jannetta realized, have to be gently nudged out of the way.
He created a means of doing so that involved slipping a tiny pad of soft Teflon, about the size of a pencil eraser, between the artery and the nerve.
Dr. Jannetta performed the first microvascular decompression operation in 1966. The patient, a 41-year-old man, was relieved of his pain.
It took about a decade for the procedure to win acceptance from the neurosurgical establishment, owing partly to Dr. Jannetta’s youth and partly to the novelty of his idea.
“He convinced many, many skeptics — and there were a lot of skeptics in the early years — because it seemed so counterintuitive as to what caused neurological disease,” Mr. Shelton said.
. . .
His many laurels include the medal of honor from the World Federation of Neurological Societies; the Olivecrona Award, presented by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden; and the Horatio Alger Award, which honors perseverance in the face of adversity or opposition.

For the full obituary, see:
MARGALIT FOX. “Dr. Peter J. Jannetta, Neurosurgeon and Pioneer on Facial Pain, Dies at 84.” The New York Times (Fri., APRIL 15, 2016): A22.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date APRIL 14, 2016, and has the title “Dr. Peter J. Jannetta, Pioneering Neurosurgeon on Facial Pain, Dies at 84.”)

The book about Jannetta, mentioned above, is:
Shelton, Mark. Working in a Very Small Place: The Making of a Neurosurgeon. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Tesla Direct Sales Thwarted by Laws that Protect Dealers Instead of Consumers

(p. B3) Tesla Motors Inc. hopes to capture mainstream auto buyers with its Model 3, an electric car it plans to unveil this week at a price about the same as the average gasoline-powered vehicle, but it may need a federal court ruling to succeed.
The Palo Alto, Calif., auto maker’s direct-to-consumer sales are prohibited by law in six states that represent about 18% of the U.S. new-car market. Barring a change of heart by those states, Tesla is preparing to make a federal case out of the direct-sales bans.
The auto maker’s legal staff has been studying a 2013 federal appeals court ruling in New Orleans that determined St. Joseph Abbey could sell monk-made coffins to customers without having a funeral director’s license. The case emerged amid a casket shortage after Hurricane Katrina. The abbey had tried to sell coffins, only to find state laws restricted such sales to those licensed by the Louisiana Board of Funeral Directors.
For now, Tesla is banking on a combination of new legislation, pending dealer applications and other factors to open doors to selling directly in Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Connecticut, Utah and West Virginia. But the company said it is ready to argue in federal court using the coffin case if necessary.
“It is widely accepted that laws that have a protectionist motivation or effect are not proper,” Todd Maron, the auto maker’s chief counsel, said in an interview. “Tesla is committed to not being foreclosed from operating in the states it desires to operate in, and all options are on the table.”
. . .
“There is no legitimate competitive interest in having consumers purchase cars through an independent dealership,” Greg Reed, an attorney with Washington D.C.-based Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning law firm, said. He calls Michigan’s laws “anti-competitive protectionism.”

For the full story, see:
MIKE RAMSEY. “Tesla Weighs Legal Fight.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 29, 2016): B3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 28, 2016, and has the title “Tesla Weighs New Challenge to State Direct-Sales Bans.”)

“Liberated People Are Ingenious”

(p. C1) Nothing like the Great Enrichment of the past two centuries had ever happened before. Doublings of income–mere 100% betterments in the human condition–had happened often, during the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome, in Song China and Mughal India. But people soon fell back to the miserable routine of Afghanistan’s income nowadays, $3 or worse. A revolutionary betterment of 10,000%, taking into account everything from canned goods to antidepressants, was out of the question. Until it happened.
. . .
(p. C2) Why did it all start at first in Holland about 1600 and then England about 1700 and then the North American colonies and England’s impoverished neighbor, Scotland, and then Belgium and northern France and the Rhineland?
The answer, in a word, is “liberty.” Liberated people, it turns out, are ingenious. Slaves, serfs, subordinated women, people frozen in a hierarchy of lords or bureaucrats are not. By certain accidents of European politics, having nothing to do with deep European virtue, more and more Europeans were liberated. From Luther’s reformation through the Dutch revolt against Spain after 1568 and England’s turmoil in the Civil War of the 1640s, down to the American and French revolutions, Europeans came to believe that common people should be liberated to have a go. You might call it: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To use another big concept, what came–slowly, imperfectly–was equality. It was not an equality of outcome, which might be labeled “French” in honor of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Piketty. It was, so to speak, “Scottish,” in honor of David Hume and Adam Smith: equality before the law and equality of social dignity. It made people bold to pursue betterments on their own account. It was, as Smith put it, “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.”

For the full commentary, see:

DEIRDRE N. MCCLOSKEY. “How the West (and the Rest) Got Rich; The Great Enrichment of the past two centuries has one primary source: the liberation of ordinary people to pursue their dreams of economic betterment.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 21, 2016): C1-C2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 20, 2016.)

McCloskey’s commentary is based on her “bourgeois” trilogy, the final volume of which is:
McCloskey, Deirdre N. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital, Transformed the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Amazon Experiments with Brick-and-Mortar

(p. A11) This week, Amazon revealed the location of its second brick-and-mortar bookstore, which will open in a few months in Southern California, at a mall near the University of California, San Diego. The online retailer seems to have big ambitions for its physical stores.
On Wednesday [March 9, 2016], Nick Wingfield, who covers Amazon for The New York Times, visited the only Amazon bookstore in existence, in the University Village mall in Seattle. From inside the store, he had an online chat with Alexandra Alter, who writes about publishing for The Times. They discussed Amazon’s strategy and how the retailer’s stores differ from other bookstores. Here’s what they had to say:
ALEXANDRA ALTER: Hi Nick! You’re reporting live from the mother ship! What’s it like?
NICK WINGFIELD: The best part is, I just tested the free Wi-Fi and it’s 114 Mbps, easily the fastest I’ve ever gotten. Thank you, Jeff Bezos!
ALEXANDRA: Great, so you can just buy stuff from the Amazon website while you’re sitting in the store. Unlike Barnes & Noble, I bet Amazon doesn’t mind if people browse in its store then go buy it online.
NICK: Exactly. Here’s the deal: At first glance, it looks like an ordinary but nice Barnes & Noble store. It’s clean and well-lit and corporate. It doesn’t have the charm of a funky used-bookstore. Once you start poking around the shelves, you notice the differences.
ALEXANDRA: How is the selection different? How are the sections organized?
NICK: They have 5,000 to 6,000 book titles, fewer than what you would find at a big Barnes & Noble. All of the books are arranged cover out, rather than spine out, in the belief that it makes browsing more friendly. I am so buying that “Boho Crochet” book.
. . .
ALEXANDRA: . . .
So, some Amazon skeptics have suggested that books are just going to be window-dressing and what Amazon really wants is a place to showcase its digital devices. Is there a prominent area for Amazon devices?
NICK: Electronics, most of them made by Amazon, like Echo and Fire TV, are the nucleus of the store. They’re spread out on tables and stands so you can fiddle with them just like you can fiddle with iPads at the Apple Store a short hop from here.
Knowledgeable people tell me that Amazon views its physical stores as an important way to introduce the public to new, unfamiliar devices. Techies might be comfortable buying a device like the Echo online — a speaker and virtual assistant for the home — but a lot of people will want to see it in the flesh first. That said, I don’t think Amazon stores would have saved the Fire Phone, the Amazon smartphone that belly-flopped. I should also say that books are not necessarily going to be the focus of all of the stores it opens in the future. Amazon intends to experiment.

For the full dialogue, see:
ALEXANDRA ALTER and NICK WINGFIELD. “Amazon, in the Material World.” The New York Times (Sat., MARCH 12, 2016): B1 & B5.
(Note: bold and italics in original print version; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the dialogue has the date MARCH 10, 2016, and has the title “A Trip Through Amazon’s First Physical Store.”)