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The Importance Of Trademarks To Startups

The Horizons Tracker

Trademarks differ from patents in that whereas patents capture technological innovation, trademarks allow companies to differentiate themselves in their advertising. They can often be costly to acquire and maintain, so can also provide a real signal of intent about a firm and its products to investors. .

IPO 52
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A Quiet Revolution in Clean-Energy Finance

Harvard Business Review

Between 2006 and 2008, more than $1 billion venture-capital dollars were channeled into startups focused on solar, wind and biofuel technologies. In the last year, however, early-stage investments in clean energy production technologies have fallen substantially (see the table at the end of this piece for more detail).

Energy 11
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The Financial Industry Needs to Start Planning for the Next 50 Years, Not the Next Five

Harvard Business Review

Despite rapid innovations in data processing and machine learning, many businesses have yet to make the leap from the Industrial Age to the information age, and the gap between technological and organizational progress is widening. Closing this gap requires much more than short-term fixes, like adopting new technologies.

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What Spinning Off a GE Business Taught Me About Managing Ultra-Fast Change

Harvard Business Review

So four years ago, when I was CEO of GE Capital Retail Finance and tapped to lead a mega change initiative — splitting off our unit into a new, publicly traded company, Synchrony Financial — I’ll admit I viewed it as a huge challenge. We have hired more than 5,000 new employees since beginning the effort in late 2013.)

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An Insider’s Account of the Yahoo-Alibaba Deal

Harvard Business Review

content (news, finance, weather) into two Chinese languages, and directory access to 20,000 web sites, an approach that the company had adopted elsewhere. By mid-2004, however, the operation was mired in conflict over control and differences in management style. On the finance and deal side, we also felt a strong kinship with Tsai.

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In Big Companies, Lean Is Only One Piece of the Puzzle

Harvard Business Review

Investors are involved for the long haul, understanding that startup managers will have to experiment and fail along the way to a successful IPO. Anyone who has operated inside a big corporate will tell you that for any project, you might have an executive mandate. or you might not.

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Why We Shouldn’t Worry About the Declining Number of Public Companies

Harvard Business Review

The number of listed firms can decline because of three developments: 1) bankruptcy, failure, or closure of listed firms, 2) delisting of firms going private or acquired, and 3) decrease in number of initial public offerings (IPOs). Chief finance officers increasingly question the ability of a day trader to value a digital company.

IPO 9