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The Princeton Review, a leading provider of educational services, surveyed more than 700 undergraduate and business schools about their offerings in entrepreneurship. The survey included questions covering everything from mentoring, experiential learning and specific course offerings to alumni successes and career prospects of current students. Schools that ranked high demonstrated a commitment to entrepreneurship both inside and outside the classroom and had faculty, students and alumni actively involved and successful in entrepreneurial endeavors.

• #5 University of Dayton, Dayton, OH
• #11 Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH
• #19 Miami University, Oxford, OH
• #23 Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY

There is no doubt that entrepreneurship is becoming very popular in the Greater Cincinnati area. Local universities with such great entrepreneurship programs will only help this trend. If you or your children are interested in this field of study, make sure to look into these programs.

I personally am enrolled in the MBA program at Northern Kentucky University with a focus in Entrepreneurship. The classes I have taken thus far have been fantastic an informative.

1. A United States patent is enforceable in any country in the world.
2. It is a safe strategy to wait until sales of a product before deciding whether to file a patent application covering the product.
3. Once a patent is issued, it is enforceable forever.
4. An issued patent is considered confidential and proprietary to the patent owner.
5. An employee is obligated by patent law to assign the patent rights to her employer.
6. Copyright protection and patent protection are mutually exclusive.
7. If you copy less than 20% of a copyrighted work, it is “fair use” and not copyright infringement.
8. The copyright notice © is required for all copyrighted works.
9. A copyright owner must apply for a registration of the copyright at the time the work is created.
10. To be valid, a trademark must be registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office.
11. A “made-up” name cannot serve as a trademark.
12. A trademak registration will expire after 50 years.
13. If a trade secret is disclosed inadvertently, it can still be protected as a trade secret.
14. Intellectual property laws do not apply in cyberspace.

Ready to score your answers?

All of the statements above are FALSE.

1. FALSE: United States patents are only enforceable in the United States.
2. FALSE: Once your idea is publicly disclosed you have a limited window of time to protect it with a patent.
3. FALSE: Patents are only enforceable for about 20 years.
4. FALSE: Patent materials are freely available to the public after the patent has been issued. Search around at the United States Patent & Trademark Office
5. FALSE: Only if the employee signed an agreement with the employer to do so before the patent was issued.
6. FALSE: A piece of work may be both copyrighted and patented.
7. FALSE: Althought difficult to enforce, it is better to just not copy works without proper attribution.
8. FALSE: If a work has an issued copyright, it is protected — regardless of the presense of a copyright notice.
9. FALSE: You may register for a copyright whenever you want. Enforcement in court, however, requires registration.
10. FALSE: To be valid, a trademark must be unique and actively used.
11. FALSE: Made-up names make some of the best trademarks.
12. FALSE: As long as a trademark is actively used, it will never expire.
13. FALSE: Guard your secrets closely.
14. FALSE: Intellectual property laws are particularly popular in cyberspace.

Thanks to Keith W. Johnson, JD., Assistant Director of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Intellectual Property and Venture Development Department for this quiz! Read more about intellectual property at Wikipedia.

StartupNation has completed research focused on how to grow businesses and has compiled their findings into a great guide: 10 Steps to Grow Your Business. Once you have made it over the hump of starting-up, it is time to start growing your company. This guide provides detailed steps for accomplishing this task.

1. Measure and Analyze Your Current Status
2. Get Efficient through Technology
3. Enhance Your Customer’s Experience
4. Cozy Up with Vendors
5. Maximize Your Niche, Expand to a New One
6. Develop New Channels
7. Acquire Growth Capital
8. Create a Culture
9. Ramp Up Awareness and Demand
10. Improve Sales Techniques

A seed does not become a tree without some growing! Also make sure to check out StartupNation’s 10 Steps to Open for Business

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users provides a great list of ways to Be Provacative

• Be Visual
• Be Different — Break Patterns and Expectations
• Be Daring
• Change Things Regularly
• Inspire Curiosity
• Pose a Challenge
• Be Controversial and Committed
• Be Fun
• Be Stimulating. Be Exciting. Be Seductive.
• Help Them Have Hi-Res Experiences

The full article goes into detail about each of these tactics. Definitely worth reading: Be Provacative

• Advisory Capitalists
• Liquidation
• Startup Strategy
• Characteristics of an Entrepreneur (Please don’t let these discourage you!)
• Selecting a Venture Capital Firm
• When to Raise Capital
• Entrepreneur’s Pitch
• Term Sheets
• Success Stories

Read the full article: 75 Blog Posts to Read Before Talking to a Venture Capitalist

1. A good business card starts a conversation
2. Make sure your card can be scanned
3. Don’t make non-standard sizes or shapes
4. Make sure the basics are on there
5. Include a line about what you do

Read on for the full list and descriptions: Business Card Best Practices

The series has nine seminars scheduled between September 14th and December 7th:

• Generate Referrals for Your Business
  John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
• Introduction to Pay-Per-Click Advertising
  Andrew Goodman, Founder & Principal, Page Zero Media
• Advanced Pay-Per-Click Advertising
  Andrew Goodman, Founder & Principal, Page Zero Media
• Introduction to Web Analytics
  John Marshall, CEO, ClickTracks
• Advanced Web Analytics
  John Marshall, CEO, ClickTracks
• Introduction to Building Traffic to Your Website
  Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide
• Advanced Traffic Building Techniques for Your Website
  Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide
• How to Successfully Manage Projects
  Craign Fitzpatrick, CEO, Devshop
• Persuade More People to Do Business on Your Website
  Jeffrey Eisenberg, Co-founder & CEO, Future Now Inc.

Visit the FreshBooks Fall Teleseminar Series website to sign up for free.

While more than half of the approximately 600 business owners surveyed said it would have been easier to start their companies had more money been available, start-up financing was not the only challenge they identified.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said advice from other business owners also would have made their start-up days easier, while 39% said a better understanding of financial management would have helped.

Additional statistics:

• 73% of start-ups were primarily funded by the owner’s personal savings
• 37% of start-ups were funded in part by loans and lines of credit
• Only 31% of small business owners surveyed started with business plans

Story on Inc.com: Most Entrepreneurs Start with Limited Funds, No Business Plan

Fund Isabella is the firm’s flagship offering, which is targeted towards early stage, women-led companies or those operating in the women’s market. Isabella believes that female-led entrepreneurial ventures are an untapped market in the venture capital industry, and hopes to find and fund start-ups that help promote minority leadership and entrepreneurship.

Here are some of the criteria for the fund:

• Industries targeted: Information technology, health care, retail/consumer products, communications
• Company size: $500,000 or more in annualized revenues
• Investment size: $250,000 to $1 million per company dispersed in multiple rounds
• Investment type: Equity or equity-linked investments, typically in the form of convertible preferred stock

Isabella’s current porfolio:

• Club Mom, Inc.
• Digital Scout
• Experience
• Gentra
• MarketMax
• Healthy Advice Networks
• ViaCell
• Wisdom Tools