IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW
Surf's Up: Volume 29, Number 2, Second Quarter 2001

Linda Kosmin Langford
IEEE EMS Board of Governors

Cyberspace is abundant with shared ideas for new business ventures. Recounts of successful launches can inspire emerging entrepreneurs and wannabe intrapreneurs. The following Web sites offer business planning wizards, startup toolkits, and documented stories of successful corporate risk taking. Many hyperlinks are promising leads that can help leverage break- through knowledge and spur innovation.

Center for Entrepreneurial leadership Clearinghouse
http://www.celcee.edu/
This site facilitates international searches for print and nonprint publications about entrepreneurship education. Each bibliographic entry provides an abstract, pathfinders to full text, contact names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, and Web site URLs. A select number of original digests and overview publications are also indexed. Since 1996, the database includes books, computer software, conference papers, journal articles, videos, and Web sites. Subject emphasis is on innovation, opportunity recognition, risk-taking benefits, new business planning, economic issues, and educational programs that help strengthen entrepreneurial motivation.

Franchise.com
http://www.franchise.com/
This site educates about franchise costs, terminology, and upcoming seminars and industry events. Special features include franchises for sale or resale, products and services from franchise suppliers, and worldwide links to consultants offering free advice about buying franchises. Aspiring franchisees can zero in on matchmaking opportunities, broaden legal awareness, be alerted to caveats about inconsistencies in franchiser-franchisee relationships, and link to regulations and guides from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

PatentCafe.com, Inc.
http://www.patentcafe.com/
This site is an intellectual property trove of information about invention presentation, development, rights of privilege, and commercialization. International in scope, this site provides links to legal forms, invention funding sources, and search engines for patents, trademarks, and copy- right details. Key attractions include access to useful magazine articles, books, and tapes. Sources are given for business startups and incubator support. Industry trends include both qualitative and quantitative market research data. Several hosted cafe-style online discussion forums foster sharing of innovative ideas among inventors, patent attorneys, and government personnel. Reference resources provide data about successful inventors, give advice to potential inventors, selectively list inventions available, describe some inventions desired by others, publicize inventors' organizations, and alert to invention promotion fraud.

Startup.wsj.com
http://Startup.wsj.com/
This site contains editorial resources of The Wall Street Journal provide entrepreneurs with guidance on how best to research trends and competitive business planning tactics. Email questions are encouraged. Answers take the form of informative essays that are publicly posted, often replete with hyperlinks to other added-value sites. For example, advice is posted weekly on startup strategies, routes to financing, and legal considerations. There is a businesses-for-sale database that can be searched geographically or by SIC code. Franchises are advertised. Also, free access is provided to a business-planning wizard. This applications program enables rapid drafting of a customized profile geared towards established and startup ventures. There are many sample business plans to review as well as planning and development tools to apply.

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW
A publication of the IEEE Engineering Management Society