There may be economic storm clouds ahead, but the folks at Stevie Award-winning E-Myth Worldwide™ believe there are reasons for optimism.

The continuing US. housing decline, with weak prices and stumbling sales, has slowed the US and world economies overall. Fourth quarter 2007 US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased at an anemic 0.6% annual rate. Some economists think that US GDP will be negative for the first two quarters of 2008, and thus believe the US is officially in a recession. The next six months are going to be tough, especially for those in the building trades. Consider:

• Applications for new building permits in the US are down 3% to 1.048 million units, a level last seen in November 1991.
• Although new housing starts in the US were up 0.8% in January, this comes after a 14.8% decline in December 2007.
• The current series of interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve will not exhibit their maximum effect until late in 2008.

According to management guru Ram Charan in a recent article in Fortune magazine, the current economic downturn in the US is largely due to the convergence of three forces:

    * A Federal Reserve-induced housing bubble, created by providing cheap money for too long;
    * Widespread use of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to aggregate low-quality mortgage debt;
    * Failure of investment banks to appropriately downgrade ratings of those “high-quality” CDOs.

1. Innovate, Quantify, and Orchestrate: Repeat
Work on innovation, product development, and building of brands. These efforts are not top-line, discretionary cost centers, but are integral structures supporting your business. Like doing regular exercise, working consistently in these fundamental areas can improve the strength of your business.

Innovation, quantification, and orchestration, as taught in E-Myth programs, are cyclic processes of successful businesses. Committing to this disciplined routine of inspection, measurement, and iterative improvement will keep your business solidly on track.

2. Reward Excellence
Tough times may not seem like the best times to give bonuses, but if one of your departments is truly excelling, you can build great staff loyalty by acknowledging successful efforts monetarily. Also, listen openly to your employees and communicate honestly about business conditions. Simple courtesies like these can have long-lasting positive effects.

3. Listen to Your Customers
Ignore your customers' opinions at your peril. Seek out your best customers' opinions, and then act on the knowledge. Difficult times are changing times, and you need to be able to adapt to new conditions.

4. Improve Your Business Skills
An economic downturn may be financially uncomfortable, but a slow time is also an excellent time to deepen your business acumen, broaden your management capability, and strengthen your self-discipline. E-Myth specializes in training and coaching business owners to deal with tough problems; an E-Myth business coach is a powerful ally when confronting difficult business conditions.

Copyright © 2006-2008 E-Myth Worldwide, Inc.

SMART Technologies received two Stevie Awards at the Women in Business Awards in New York City last year: Most Innovative Company of the Year (up to 2,500 employees); and SMART CEO Nancy Knowlton for Best Canadian Entrepreneur.

Nancy Knowlton co-founded SMART in 1987 with partner David Martin, and in 1991 they introduced the world's first interactive whiteboard. Since then, more than 800,000 SMART Board™ interactive whiteboards have been installed in classrooms, offices and training rooms around the world.

“Bringing a Canadian innovation such as the SMART Board interactive whiteboard onto the world stage has been most rewarding,” says Nancy Knowlton. “These Stevie Awards recognize the hard work and ingenuity of so many people working at SMART who are contributing to changing the way the world learns and works.”

SMART Technologies is both the industry pioneer and a global market leader in user-friendly interactive whiteboards and other group collaboration tools. SMART products include the award-winning family of SMART Board interactive whiteboards, pen displays, and interactive overlays, as well as response systems, conferencing applications, classroom management, and concept-mapping software.

SMART has maintained its position as global education market segment leader with sales in over 100 countries worldwide, and in 2006 the company surpassed CAD$1 billion in cumulative sales.

Taking the Boring out of the Boardroom
In addition to the educational market, SMART products are designed to meet the requirements of today’s corporate environment. Thousands of companies around the world, including NASA, Texas Instruments, BMW, Boeing, the Los Angeles Lakers, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, Disney Imagineering, and Harvard University use SMART products to effectively display media-rich information, host and participate in audio and videoconferencing, share desktops remotely, collaborate, share data and efficiently train personnel.

In addition to the Stevie Awards, SMART has also been presented with the Lifetime Achievement Canada Export Award from the Canadian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and has qualified for the country’s most prestigious national business award, Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies, for eight consecutive years.

About SMART
Founded in 1987, SMART Technologies is a private company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with offices in Germany, France, Japan, China, New York City, Chicago IL and Washington DC. Most of SMART's products are assembled in Canada.

In 1992, SMART formed a strategic alliance with U.S. computer giant Intel® Corporation. This alliance resulted in joint product development, joint marketing efforts and Intel's equity ownership in SMART. Today, SMART employs more than 1,000 people. SMART products are sold through dealers across North America and through distributors in more than 100 countries. To learn more about SMART visit www.smarttech.com.

About Nancy Knowlton
Nancy L. Knowlton is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-Founder of SMART Technologies. Nancy focuses primarily on business development and strategic initiatives for the growth and development of SMART. Recognized as one of Canada's top businesswomen, Nancy was the 1999 Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in the Export category, awarded by the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and the Bank of Montreal. She and SMART co-founder David Martin were awarded the 1999 Prairies Region Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award, sponsored by Ernst and Young, and a Manning Innovation Award in 2002.
As co-founders, David and Nancy received the 2005 Alberta Centennial Medal by the province’s Minister of Innovation and Science, in recognition of the impact their work in science and technology has had on innovation in Alberta, and honoring their outstanding achievements in making the province a better place to live, work and do business.

Nancy has a diploma of collegial studies, a business administration degree with honors, and an MBA in marketing and finance. She completed her chartered accountant accreditation in Alberta. Prior to co-founding SMART, Nancy taught accounting and computer science at a Canadian university before taking a position with an international accounting firm in Calgary. At the time of her departure, she was a senior audit manager.

In 2002–2003, Nancy was one of the nine members of the independent commission that reviewed Alberta's basic education system and produced Every Child Learns, Every Child Succeeds. Additionally, Nancy has spoken around the world on the topic of The 21st Century Classroom. Today, sharing her perspectives on the successful integration strategies for interactive whiteboards in everyday teaching and learning. In 2003, Nancy was awarded an honorary Doctor of Commerce degree from Saint Mary’s University in recognition of her many business accomplishments.

Katy Thorbahn is Senior VP & General Manager of the Philadelphia office of Avenue A | Razorfish, one of the world's leading interactive media and technology services agencies. Katy won a Stevie Award in the category of Best Executive in the 2007 Stevie Awards for Women in Business. The awards were announced on November 12 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

We recently spoke with Katy about Avenue A | Razorfish. She shared with us her thoughts on how to motivate and manage a creative workfoce, and what it takes to be a successful manager in the advertising industry.

Listen to our podcast interview with Katy Thorbahn...

Blogs, or web logs, are all the rage these days. Each month in this space we'll point you to several blogs that we think might be of interest to you.

Cracked.com : Political humor, parody news, and satire for those who don't believe everything they read but read it anyway. Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.
Millions of Us : Millions of Us LLC is an ad agency specializing in virtual worlds. Their blog offers a fascinating insight into Second Life projects.
Milk and Cookies : A mix of funny ads and oddball video clips from around the world.