Get our email updates
Stay up-to-date on the companies, people and issues that impact businesses in Syracuse, Central New York and beyond.
What's New
Upcoming Events
CNYBJ Job Board
Business Mentors
Public library offers extensive free market-research options
SYRACUSE — Market research is an essential process for businesses and nonprofits looking to start new ventures, secure financing, support grant requests, and understand their markets. Traditionally, budgeting for research has been a challenge for small businesses with limited resources, but some resources available through the Onondaga County Public Library (OCPL) provide the tools to […]
Firsthand highlights from the 2016 Hannover Messe show
Once a year, in April, companies of all shapes and sizes — along with political leaders, representatives from trade groups and economic-development organizations — gather at Hannover Messe, the world’s largest industrial technology trade fair in Hannover, Germany. Participants engage in dialog that hopefully leads to new business opportunities and helps drive local economies.
Most everyone can agree that electricity is the lifeblood of our economy. Without it, nothing runs, nothing gets manufactured, and our health and safety are at risk. A quick look across the energy landscape shows we’re in a period of exciting innovation. How people think about and use electricity is changing as quickly as the
What makes for a successful downtown retail mix
If you are the manager of a private mall, you may have a set formula for determining what stores to go where — and the ability to enforce it through your leasing contracts. Meanwhile, if you are the manager of a business improvement district or a city official, you simply don’t have that level of
A few years ago, I was contacted by a business owner whose customer had suffered a sudden, tragic loss. A fire and explosion had occurred at the customer’s home, and a young child was killed during the fire. Although the authorities did not immediately suggest the cause of the fire was in any way related to
OSHA Makes Sweeping Changes to its Illness and Injury Reporting Rule
VIEWPOINT Most employers traditionally have had little to no interaction with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency tasked with overseeing workplace safety. Unless they were inspected by OSHA — and the 35,820 inspections conducted in fiscal-year 2015 pales in comparison to the tens of millions of employers across the country —
What Happened to SEO, and Why Does it Matter to the CEO?
In 1994, a man named Brian Pinkerton developed the first capable web crawler. His amazing software tool could generate the top 25 web-page results, which was quite an achievement at the time. In the late 1990s, early search-engine players like Excite, Lycos, Yahoo, and AltaVista used custom web crawlers like Pinkerton’s to succeed in the
Questions to Ask Yourself When Starting a Business
When entrepreneurs ask me for help in starting a business, I immediately think of three questions I need to ask them back. I do that for two reasons. First, there is such a wide range of business types, startup forms, levels of experience, and personal situations, that more details are needed to move beyond the
Financial Snapshot: the Balance Sheet
Spring has sprung, the grass is green, the books are closed, and the balance sheet looks clean. Over the course of the last few months, I have had the privilege of presenting a number of sessions focused on how to read and understand financial statements. The sessions were well attended, and the depth-of- discussion questions
Cybersecurity & Employee Benefit-Plan Fiduciary Duties: Going Beyond HIPAA
It seems as though we hear about new cybersecurity issues every day — from traditional hacking incidents to the increasingly sophisticated phishing, malicious apps and websites, social engineering, and ransomware attacks. Employee-benefit plan sponsors likely have a fiduciary duty to ensure participant information and plan assets are protected from the growing number of cyber threats
Get our email updates
Stay up-to-date on the companies, people and issues that impact businesses in Syracuse, Central New York and beyond.