Shortage of Doctors - No Kidding?

When I saw the title of this NYTimes piece I thought, yep that's what happens in a free market for a scarce resource. The free market moves resources to where the demand is greatest, keeping all satisfied at the market price. When you limit supply, as doctors have been for years by the AMA regime, resources continue to follow demand, but not all will get what they need, and pricing differences will drive the solution, highest prices (in the cities mostly, or the Mayo Clinic) will get the docs. Economics 101 and a really bad way to allocate a public resource. Fix that Obama, a hard nut to crack.

Speak with Your Investors, It's Tough Out There

We are in a rough time for all small businesses, but especially for relatively new or start-up businesses. The medical device market is one of them. In this excellent New York Times article the writer describes an innovative company that is suffering from current market conditions.

I went through a similar situation early in this decade when the company went from 120 people to less than 80 after a new round of money from investors. That was just after the bottom fell out from the Tech bubble (remember April 2001 - kind of gets lost because of 9/11 that year, but it was bad for the market for sure). New products get the first shaft, for sure.

In addition, professional investors are again starting to focus on under-performing companies, witness a little fight/fray going on in the Chicago suburbs as described in a recent article by Greg Burns in the Chicago Tribune. The dispute revolves around a hedge fund manager who holds a small company's stock, and it disappointed with the market performance relative its peers and focuses the complaint on overhead and related costs in the corporate suite.

These are nervous times my friends, keep hold of your cash and find ways to survive. Keep in close contact with your investors (keep those friends close, and enemies closer), make them feel special, else they might pounce and end your run.

Baseball for Small Business and a Sports Business event

Since opening day is just around the corner, Wait it's today!, I wanted to post a little reference to a nice article currently on Inc. magazine's site about small businesses that are servicing big league baseball teams. The article focuses on businesses providing everything from protection netting to biodiesel recycling at Turner Field, the home of the Braves. It's just nice to know that the all American sport provides a great number of jobs to small businesses. It is the American way after all.

I also wanted to give a shout out to my local business school club which is hosting a stellar panel discussion among renowned sports business executives in Chicago on April 23rd. The Ross Alumni Club of Chicago, local home of the graduates of the University of Michigan Business School, is hosting it's 6th annual Spring Conference, a dinner discussion around the topic of Sports Business; for the love (or profit?) of the game; with open online registration (with full details) currently ongoing. It's open to grads and friends (e.g. the general public) as long as tickets are available, get yours now for this exciting event!