Family Business Succession Planning Opportunities

Family businesses account for over 50% of U.S. GDP, and 35% of Fortune 500 companies are controlled by families. These companies are vital to the economy, offering stability, a long-term commitment, and responsibility to their communities and employees. Although family-owned businesses are responsible for 60% of jobs in America, a recent family business survey done by the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Family Business Alliance indicates that despite succession being a critical issue for many family companies, only 15% of them have anything resembling a succession plan in place. Furthermore, businesses have a difficult time surviving through multiple generations; just making it to the second generation is a milestone event; only 30% make it through the second generation, and just 12% make it through the third (“The Family Business Sector in 2016: Success and Succession,” PricewaterhouseCoopers, https://pwc.to/2D3ftcF). This article explains how CPAs, as trusted advisors, can play a significant role in establishing prudent and functional succession plans for their business owner clients

Why business angels reject investment opportunities: Is it personal?

A major focus of research on business angels has examined their decision-making processes and investment criteria. As business angels reject most of the opportunities that they receive, this article explores the reasons informing such decisions. In view of angel heterogeneity, investment opportunities might be expected to be rejected for differing reasons. Two sources of data are used to examine this issue. Face-to-face interviews with 30 business angels in Scotland and Northern Ireland provided information on typical ‘deal killers’. This was complemented by an Internet survey of United Kingdom that attracted responses from 238 UK business angels. The findings confirm that the main reason for rejection relates to the entrepreneur/management team. However, angel characteristics do not explain the number of reasons given for opportunity rejection nor do they predict the reasons for rejecting investment opportunities. This could be related to the increasing trend for business angels to join organised groups which, in turn, leads to the development of a shared repertoire of investment approaches. We suggest the concept of ‘communities-of-practice’ as an explanation for this finding

LOCAL COOPERATIVES' EVALUATION OF BUSINESS INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Agricultural cooperatives have been restructuring, by way of mergers, acquisitions, joint-ventures, and strategic alliances, to increase efficiencies to remain competitive in a changing business environment. The research evaluating the reorganization of cooperatives has revealed that less than one-half of the restructured businesses are financially successful. There is the potential to significantly influence the future health of the cooperative business sector if, first, insights can be gained concerning the factors being considered by cooperative managers when making restructuring decisions and, second, extension education programs can be adapted to meet the greatest need. In this study we examine: (a) what methods of valuation cooperatives are using when evaluating new business opportunities, and (b) what factors influence the methods of valuation preferred by cooperatives when evaluating new business opportunities.capital budgeting methods, cooperatives, finance, restructuring, Agribusiness,

Nanotechnology and business opportunities: scenarios as awareness instrument

For a few years now, nanotechnology has been recognised as a promising new growth innovator. This leads to a shift from the exploration of nanotechnology knowledge towards a phase of exploitation. The coming years this commercialisation of nanotechnology will be extended. Nanotechnology is a disruptive technology phenomenon, which leads to more difficulties in overseeing business opportunities. Additionally, the fact that high-tech small firms, especially those dealing with nanotechnology, are highly interested in developments in science and technology, begs the question how to stimulate the awareness for (new) business opportunities in nanotechnology within these firms. A promising strategy to stimulate learning and awareness of business opportunities in nanotechnology is the use of scenarios. These projections focused on uncertainty stretch the mental model of entrepreneurs and/or managers and have the ability to activate learning processes. This paper presents the (theoretical) fundaments of scenario usage in relation to the recognition of business opportunities in nanotechnology.

Business opportunities in the Ethiopian fruit and vegetable sector

The horticultural sector in Ethiopia is growing strongly. Major part of this growth is created by investments in the floriculture sector. Recently more and more in terest from the Dutch private sector is shown in the Ethiopian fruits and vegeta ble sector. Export of fruit and vegetables has been limited but is now growing strongly with new investors coming in. Both in Europe and in the Middle East there is a growing interest for products from Ethiopia. Presently, the main export products are fresh beans, strawberries, tomatoes, courgettes, peppers and fresh herbs. A potential new crop is table grapes. The Government of Ethiopia gives high pri ority to the development of the horticulture sector and in 2008 the Horticultural Development Agency has been established with a specific focus to promote and support the further development of the horticulture sector. It is concluded that the further development of the fruit and vegetable sector in Ethiopia for export to Europe and the Middle East has good perspectives and provides interesting opportunities for foreign investors. The sector is however still in its infant stage. Facilitating conditions for doing business are not yet op timal, but are expected to improve in the near future. For growers who consider starting operations in Ethiopia it is important to carefully select a location and ensure getting the logistical and cool chain well organised beforehand. For companies considering sourcing from Ethiopia it is important to build good relations with the potential growers, provide hands on guidance and train ing and invest in organising the logistical supply chain well

Towards a flexible service integration through separation of business rules

Driven by dynamic market demands, enterprises are continuously exploring collaborations with others to add value to their services and seize new market opportunities. Achieving enterprise collaboration is facilitated by Enterprise Application Integration and Business-to-Business approaches that employ architectural paradigms like Service Oriented Architecture and incorporate technological advancements in networking and computing. However, flexibility remains a major challenge related to enterprise collaboration. How can changes in demands and opportunities be reflected in collaboration solutions with minimum time and effort and with maximum reuse of existing applications? This paper proposes an approach towards a more flexible integration of enterprise applications in the context of service mediation. We achieve this by combining goal-based, model-driven and serviceoriented approaches. In particular, we pay special attention to the separation of business rules from the business process of the integration solution. Specifying the requirements as goal models, we separate those parts which are more likely to evolve over time in terms of business rules. These business rules are then made executable by exposing them as Web services and incorporating them into the design of the business process.\ud Thus, should the business rules change, the business process remains unaffected. Finally, this paper also provides an evaluation of the flexibility of our solution in relation to the current work in business process flexibility research