By Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Abstract
The Business Model is supplanting the Business Plan in many organizations. It not only describes the complete business ecosystem, it is a mechanism to discover profitable new relationships amongst stakeholder groups. The Business Model is more resilient than a plan and harder for competitors to copy. The Business Model today has 12 main elements—flow chart, value proposition, financial model, benchmarking, effective marketing, talent acquisition, self capitalization, differentiated value, cash conversion cycle, integration of the Internet and Mobile Internet, leverage and social overlay. It is possible today, for the first time in history, to make service businesses scalable and mass customization possible due to the advent of the Internet and Mobile Internet.
Introduction
The Business Model (BM) has come a long way in the last few years from a one page pictogram (or flowchart) of the ‘engine of a business’ to a many faceted model that fully describes the ‘engine room’ of an enterprise.
Recall what a basic BM is—clients are usually on the RHS (Right Hand Side) of the page, the business is in the middle and suppliers are on the LHS. Typically, products and services flow from left to right—from suppliers to the enterprise where some type of value is added and then through the organization to their clients and customers. Usually, money flows in the opposite direction—from clients to the enterprise and then from there to suppliers when they are paid. Occasionally, these directions can reverse with money flowing to clients and customers, for example, and information or marketing opportunities flowing in the opposite direction.
There is an orthogonal dimension in every model—a marketing dimension, which is where each organization demonstrates how they acquire clients and customers in a cost effective manner.
A fuller picture of every enterprise is formed when at least two dimensions on either side (and sometimes more) are included in the model. That is, the clients of the company’s clients and who the suppliers to the company’s suppliers also become known. In this way, new relationships amongst players and stakeholders can be discovered and creative new ways to enhance every organization can be found. Each enterprise is now being looked at as part of an overall business ecosystem and when they are able to secure place as a liked and trusted part of an ecosystem, business longevity is likely to increase.
Steve Jobs insisted that AT&T provide Apple with a share of its monthly subscriber revenues in return for exclusive access to the iPhone for two years (Wall Street Journal, How Steve Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth, February 17th, 2007, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117168001288511981-euxzmjNFZTZhA_2z8OBtD6GK900_20070224.html?mod=blogs). With this single strategic move, Jobs revolutionized yet another industry’s business model—cell phone manufacturers went from selling a ‘shrink wrapped’ gadget for a one-time payment in a brutally competitive market that was racing to the bottom to an industry with multiple sources of revenues, some of which are recurring.
Imagine how much harder Steve Jobs and Apple would have to work today and how much lower their productivity as measured in terms of revenue per employee would be without recurring revenues from iPhone app sales and revenues, advertising revenues on their iOS platform, downloads of paid content from iTunes and iBooks plus a share of their carriers’ subscriber fees? We estimated that Apple’s Internal Rate of Return on the iPhone is an incredible 288% p.a. (http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=1714). But it wasn’t the iPhone per se that propelled Apple to becoming the most valuable company on the planet; it was the iPhone’s business model that did that.
Was this unprecedented move by AT&T (to give Apple access to a share of its monthly subscriber revenues) worthwhile from the telecom’s POV? Well, Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/01/iphone-att-q4-sales) reported that the iPhone represented 80% of all AT&T smartphone activations in the last quarter of 2011 during which they added 9.4 million new subscribers, 50% more than in any previous quarter in company history.
Sam Palmisano, when he was CEO of IBM, told BusinessWeek (April 3rd, 2006) why he places a great deal of emphasis on the importance of business model innovation, “… with product innovation, it’s a certainty that your competition is shortly going to copy what you have done. With business-model innovation, though, if you can come up with a unique way of doing things, it’s much tougher to react to.”
The Complete Model
The complete Business Model is today made of a dozen elements—
1. A one page pictogram (flowchart) showing the whole business ecosystem (the enterprise embedded in a network of relationships with clients, clients’ clients, suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers together with an orthogonal marketing dimension showing how the enterprise acquires customers and clients in a cost effective manner.)
2. A spreadsheet which calculates the value proposition for a single customer or client; it demonstrates in a clear and concise way how a new enterprise/product/service/division creates either lower costs or higher revenues (or some combination of both) for a single customer. The corollary here is that organizations should insist that their suppliers provide them with their value proposition too. They should not expect less of their suppliers than they do of themselves.
3. A second spreadsheet develops a financial model for the enterprise. From this model, each firm is able to measure the impact each additional client has on the top line of the firm. The firm is also able to test the sensitivity of its top line to, say, changes in success rate in any of its marketing channels, changes in its COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) and other variables. The value proposition for clients and their impact on the enterprise (which is measured by the financial model) are mirror images of each other. The business ecosystem is complete when suppliers provide the organization with their value proposition and they also have a financial model of how their client’s organization impacts them. Why should any organization care if their suppliers have workable financial models? Long term viability of every firm depends, in part, on maintaining a sustainable and efficient supply chain.
4. Each business model should be benchmarked against the best-of-breed in their industry. We developed a Business Model Scoring Test, http://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/BusinessModels/BusinessModelScoringTest.htm to assist in this regard.
5. Each enterprise will not be successful unless it can acquire clients or customers in a cost effective way. If Super Bowl commercials are needed before acquiring any launch clients, the new enterprise is unlikely to be successful. If any new organization requires heroic efforts to land clients, they won’t be around long. So Guerrilla Marketing, Social Media and Market Channel Development have to be part of the marketing dimension in every business model. This is just as true for NGOs, Not-For-Profits and Charities. These types of enterprises need to have complete Business Models including financial model, value proposition and other elements described here. They have a fiduciary duty to be efficient and effective too.
6. Having a great business model without the ability to execute is not very useful. That is, execution counts, ideas by themselves, even great ideas, are not enough. We developed an online ECQ Test to test individual entrepreneurial ability: http://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/ECQTest/ECQ(ns)TestAuto.htm.
“Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder,” Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, 2008.
7. There are business models that do not easily lend themselves to entrepreneurial startups. Typically, they require enormous amounts of capital that simply cannot be raised by entrepreneurs. Business models that use Bootstrap Capital and Self Capitalization techniques to fund their new startups are usually more focused on customer needs, customer acquisition and building cashflow. Strong cashflow is clearly part of improving survivorship rates and low cost or free bootstrap capital can lead to higher Rates of Return (both project IRR, Internal Rate of Return, and ROE, Return on Equity, will likely increase). Greater use of self capitalization techniques in early stages of startup development will also reduce the need for either Angel or VC capital which will increase the likelihood that original founders will retain control for a longer period. Having launch customers and growing cashflow improve valuations and improve negotiating positions of entrepreneurs vis–à–vis sophisticated investors.
8. Most startups do not necessarily have to find a never-before-tried-idea. Perhaps the reason it has never been tried before is that it is a bad idea. There are very few startups like Priceline.com (where each customer sets a price instead of the business) or Fed-Ex (pioneer of the airline hub and spoke system that made overnight package delivery possible). But at a minimum, each organization requires something that differentiates it from existing firms—there must be some type of innovation brought to bear on the industry. Differentiated Value and the ability to be able to succinctly explain it are essential. Imagine YouTube, for a moment, having been around circa the latter half of the 18th Century. Perhaps a video of Mozart’s last concert or Albert Einstein’s speech when he won his Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 would now be available? (YouTube actually has one minute and 22 seconds of Einstein speaking in Stockholm, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOAzNYVvaNc.) What would such a video archive be worth today? What if Pinterest.com had been around since the 1800s and you could see what else interested James Watt (inventor of the steam engine)? Test and discover enterprise differentiated value using thought experiments like these (by thinking backwards as well as forwards).
“I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things,” Steve Jobs.
9. The Cash Conversion Cycle should be determined for each business model. What use is a fast growing business if it goes bankrupt in the process? This occurs when the CCC is too long which means that it either takes too long to collect receivables or the organization is paying for inputs too soon before being able to deliver its products or services or inventories are too high.
10. Jack Welch when asked upon his retirement from GE, ‘What was the single most important invention during his decades with GE?’ pointed to the Internet and said it’s ‘the biggest change I have ever seen.’ The Internet (and the Mobile Internet) must be integrated into every business model. More on this later.
11. Building leverage into every model is essential; this multiplies the force and effect of effort, time, brainpower and capital. Leverage in business models comes from ten primary sources—i. HR (Human Resources), ii. OPM (Other People’s Money), iii. forced savings, iv. innovation, v. capital equipment, vi. location, vii. network effects, viii. marketing channels that reduce a marketing problem from one to many to one to a few, ix. branding, co-branding, co-opetition and co-creation and, finally, x. inflation. Test your business model by asking yourself do you have great Human Resources, are you using Other People’s Money, benefiting from forced savings, innovating, do you have a great location or brand, does your enterprise benefit from network effects or marketing channels that allow you to connect cost effectively with your clients or customers and reduces that task from one to many to one to a few and is your capital equipment top notch/best-of-breed & do you benefit from inflation? If so, you are probably maximizing your leverage.
“In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy,” Warren Buffett.
12. Business Models with a social overlay can create a coherent community around each enterprise which make it difficult to knock off. They also provide a platform for a separate way of giving back to society often through a not-for-profit organization bolted onto the model. Such bolt-ons can become independent, self-funded marketing channels for the for-profit operation.
Case Study—Loose Button’s Business Model
Ray Cao and Aditya Shah are both young engineers from the University of Waterloo. Now what can they possibly know about the beauty products industry for a client base that is approximately 98% female and growing fast? It turns out that Ray and Aditya and their small crew of hackers and marketing mavens know a lot about their industry—they are reshaping the way it delivers samplers to their consumers.
Previously, suppliers like L’Oreal, Moroccan Oil, Dermalogica and dozens of others would employ agencies to go into malls and high end stores to hand out samples to consumers picked out nearly randomly. How much data did they collect? Almost nothing.
Ray and Aditya are highly analytical and believe in the value of tracking metrics to help build an enterprise and make it smarter. So they decided to do something about this part of the industry and, in doing so, have created one of the most innovative business models yet seen.
Their value proposition is, “We’re the Netflix of the beauty products industry but with e-Harmony for brains,” says Cao.
Every consumer who signs up is asked to complete a profile letting LooseButton.com know what type of products they are interested in. Then once a month, a Luxe Box is delivered to their door by CPC (Canada Post Corporation) or USPS with travel-size samplers from suppliers they are interested in. This is a form of mass customization—every Luxe Box can contain different products matching individual consumer interests with the right type of supplier products with a few surprises on the upside thrown in.
Clients respond well to LB surveys and have independently started to record YouTube videos of themselves receiving, using and experimenting with Luxe Box products. Some of these videos are getting phenomenal numbers of views (over 10,000) spreading the word for LB at no cost to LB. Tribes of makeup evangelists are forming around the strongest influencers in their ecosystem.
What’s also interesting is that clients are paying $12 per month ($10 if they sign up for a year) to receive their monthly try-before-you-buy Luxe Box filled with samples that LB’s suppliers provide them for free. There’s still more cleverness here. In addition to providing them with free samplers, suppliers like L’Oreal and Moroccan Oil pay a rights fee to be included in the Luxe Box which means that LB is in the enviable position of being paid not only by clients but suppliers as well.
Ray and Aditya have also implemented some negative cost marketing—organizations are paying them to market Luxe Box for them… The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and other publications, desperately trying to hold onto their readers, buy Luxe Box subscriptions (at around 80% of retail price) to give to their most loyal customers vastly extending LB’s reach and increasing its growth rate as well. The Founders won’t say exactly how many clients they have but it’s over 10,000.
Based in Toronto on Bay Street in shared co-worker space, their Ottawa tie-in was they wanted to use By-ward market-based Shopify’s platform but instead had to move to Recurly.com because the former is not set up for recurring payments (aka, subscription billing). Shopify is set up for dozens or hundreds of SKUs, LB has only one.
This is a tough business to knock off in the sense that until the Internet can download mini portions of makeup or beauty potions and as long as Canada Post Corporation and USPS keep going, they’re in great shape.
Here is LooseButton.com’s business model circa 2012. See below. Ray and Aditya have plans to change this model in 2013—adding product sales—because their clients are demanding that.
When asked why they named their company ‘Loose Button’, Ray says, “Buttons are fasteners that connect two pieces of cloth. We intelligently connect consumers and brands.”
They started LB right out of University and have an Advisory Board with luminaries such as Harry Rosen and Jagoda Pike (former publisher of the Toronto Star) sitting on it. “Mentoring helped us a lot,” says Aditya. “We decided not to go into the apparel space since it was already saturated. We went into the market research and product discovery side instead.”
Their biz coach comes in once per week and makes them set goals, track metrics and live up to their word. Internet startups that track their metrics grow 7x faster than those that don’t according to Startup Genome Report 01, Max Marmer, Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, Ron Berman, 2011.
They are also part of Impact.org which focuses on fast growing enterprises. Started out of Waterloo, it is now a national organization.
Both Ray and Aditya were part of the coop program at Waterloo and they each had six tries to figure out that they wanted to do during their course of studies. What it taught them was that they didn’t like working for other people (Ray at a Wall Street firm and Aditya at a large accounting firm and then various tech companies).
LB has plans for other Boxes—perhaps another line focused on Men’s products, possibly a foodie version. They intentionally called their first Box something different from their company name so they could conquer other verticals later. It’s what RIM tried to do with Blackberry and Playbook.
There wasn’t much to change in their biz model other than suggesting that they might consider adding a social layer over the whole thing—the follow/follower model is a powerful one which knits the community more closely together and makes it even tougher to knock off. They might integrate the Twitter API and allow customers and suppliers to follow top influencers in their ecosystem on a more coherent basis than just stumbling onto one of their YouTube videos.
Other changes might include adding a Qricket Code to each Luxe Box (that’s a QR code where you can change the website it resolves to after printing them) so that, like ET, each Box can call home. Maybe there will also one day be a LooseButton.org to give back to their community too.
Business models today are not just about making money—enterprises that are all about the money seem to have none and those that are about building insanely great products and services plus making a contribution to society seem to have it all. This is a Gen Y (and Steve Jobs) phenomenon. So bolting on to their existing model a standalone not-for-profit dedicated to say health and fitness and with its own sources of funding and marketing to their existing business model would not only help LB, it would help the wider community cope with issues like obesity, diet, lifetime fitness, abuse of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.
Their model as it exists today where they get paid by consumers and suppliers plus other organizations pay them to market their product for them while forming an intelligent community that is hard to knock off is, frankly, amazing.
Integrating the Internet and the Mobile Internet into Everything You Do
The Internet is making it feasible to do things with business models that were never possible before including:
A. Create custom outputs from standard inputs
Unlike Henry Ford who said you can have whatever color of car you want so long as it is black, the Internet allows an enterprise to provide a nearly unlimited choice by combining standard inputs into a myriad of customized products or services. Every experience with an Internet-mediated entity can be wildly varied.
Mass Customize Products and Services
B. Reverse out the work to clients and suppliers
For example, a Spa could allow clients to pick and choose amongst services and so tailor each visit to their individual preferences, tastes and needs. Since they are doing all the work of customizing their next visit (adding hair styling, massage therapy, pedicure, manicure, dietary consultation, yoga class and hair coloring and then deleting half the services because, say, they exceed current budgetary constraints), the enterprise doesn’t care how many times they change their minds before hitting the ‘submit’ button.
C. Embed each enterprise in a trusted, networked business ecosystem made up of clients, suppliers, clients’ clients, suppliers’ suppliers and the organization itself
To show how this works, ask for example the question, ‘Who are the clients of a Spa’s clients?’ Since most clients for most spas are probably women, the clients of the Spa’s clients are likely to be men. And what do men want? They want to purchase gift certificates from the Spa. By examining the nodes and links in a business model, it is often possible to discover new ways of delivering value in the ecosystem as well as discovering new marketing channels and supply chains as well.
D. Matchmaking—directly connecting clients to suppliers making service industries scalable for the first time ever
Returning to the example of the Spa, their employees could be treated not as employees but as suppliers. In this way, if a client wants to have a manicure, pedicure, massage and hair colouring, the Internet or the Mobile Internet allows the spa to create a backend system that matches them up much as, say, eHarmony.com or PlentyOfFish.com do. Match making is not a widely understood phenomenon. Service industries are notoriously labor intensive and hard to scale; i.e., more output requires more inputs in a more or less linear relationship or, worse, the ratio of marginal output to marginal input might be less than one. This happens when a service business is too complex to manage effectively as it grows. In consulting, that size is often one person. As soon as the enterprise grows beyond a single practioner, their earnings per person may actually go down while the time to produce those earnings goes up. This is not a happy event and explains there are so many one person service firms in real estate, management consulting, IT consulting, accounting, legal, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, the Mr. Fix It industry, roof repair, mechanic, appliance repair, PC repair, Network management and so forth. Internet matchmaking is likely to change all of these industries by making them scalable. Industry consolidation and larger average firm sizes are likely occurrences.
E. Mass communicate planet-wide through social media and other Internet tools at almost no cost
What is interesting is that some of these communication tools which are free to use like social media powerhouses Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Facebook produce a powerful, newish form of communication—the viral message. It’s newish (as opposed to new) because the chain letter permitted something similar before. But it’s powerful.
F. Crowd sourcing (using the Internet as intermediary) means relying on the wisdom of the crowd to, for example, pick and vote on stories for news agglomeration sites like Reddit.com
Google can serve up ads to people who are searching for, say, digital cameras. Facebook, on the other hand, by mining its d-base, can serve up digital camera ads to new Moms in New Jersey who have never posted any photos of their kids. FB can also advertise wedding photographers in Vancouver to women who have just changed their status from ‘single’ to ‘engaged’. In ‘The Facebook Effect’, David Kirkpatrick points out that Google’s style of advertising (providing information to people who already know what they are looking for, at least in general terms) makes up 20% of all advertising. The rest is brand advertising meant to target people who have not yet made a buying decision or don’t know what they are looking for. That is Facebook’s specialty and you can understand why Kirkpatrick thinks FB will ultimately be a hugely successful commercial enterprise.
G. Relational data base
Organizations mine their customer (or supplier) interactions for intelligence. For example, Amazon asks questions such as, ‘Would you like to see what other people who bought this (book, CD, video, etc.) also bought?’ These suggestion engines result in significant increases in average order size and volume of sales.
H. User generated content
This is another form of reversing out the work to customers and suppliers. It underpins the business models of YouTube.com, Threadless.com, Facebook, Twitter and many other new enterprises.
I. Network effects
Google is an example of network effects—the more people who use their search engine, the better their algorithm is which brings more users which brings more data which delivers greater accuracy which results in more ads served in a self-reinforcing virtuous circle. It is more difficult to produce network effects in a gated community which is why Google+ is likely to struggle while Twitter flourishes.
Conclusion
Business modeling is a relatively new field of research and practice; it will undoubtedly evolve extensively in just a few years.
Business modeling may be superseding business planning in many ways because, as successful Generals know, the best battle plan ever created changes the instant it comes into contact with the enemy. Business models change too when they come into contact with the marketplace and the supply chain and they evolve over time as each organization comes to know and better understand the relationships implicit in their business ecosystems. Also business models are much harder to copy than any single product or service and, if an organization gets them right, they can create amazing new (sustainable) enterprises.
As former student Daniel Beauchamp once said, “Your competitors can copy what you are doing now but what they can’t know and can’t copy is what you are going to do next.” Dwight D. Eisenhower said it a bit differently, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,”
Entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and product managers with a solid business model know that their implementation and execution of it will test their entrepreneurial skill set and, while they set goals each day and plan out each day and create To Do lists each day, they also know they always have to be flexible as circumstances change and new opportunities and challenges multiply around them.
The Internet is having a profound impact on the way business models are designed and implemented. The more that the Internet and Mobile Internet are incorporated in new or existing models, the more they are likely to prosper. The Internet is just a teenager and is likely to subsume everything in its path over the coming decades.
Business modeling and the integration of the Internet into Business Models are key factors as entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs try to decode the DNA of successful startups and product launches.
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Author Biography
Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Bruce M Firestone is best known as a professor, entrepreneur and founder of NHL hockey team, the Ottawa Senators and their home arena, Scotiabank Place, as well as Author, Quantum Entity Trilogy, Entrepreneurs Handbook II and Urban Nirvana (2015).
Firestone is Executive Director of Exploriem.org, a Canadian registered Not-For-Profit corporation focused on educating and mentoring entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and artpreneurs in Canada and around the world. He is also coaching and teaching via Learn By Doing School, an organization dedicated to providing student entrepreneurs with access to research, education and a network of high achievers not available elsewhere. Prof Bruce is also an effective keynote speaker for organizations with a positive focus on creating opportunity for their stakeholder group.
Prof Bruce has launched or helped launch more than 172 startups in fields including tech, real estate, design, art and services. He advises clients on business modeling, self-financing, smart marketing, social media, differentiated value, strategic selling and business development, market channel development, harnessing the Internet and mobile web, urban design, real estate development, design economics, product management, sponsorship, fundraising and development economics as well as issues related to entrepreneurial organizations including not-for-profits, NGOs and charities.
In May of 2006, Dr Firestone joined the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management at as its first Entrepreneur-in-Residence. He previously taught or studied at McGill University (Bachelor of Civil Engineering), Laval University, Harvard University, University of Western Ontario, University of New South Wales (Master of Engineering-Science, Traffic and Transportation), Australian National University (PhD in Urban Economics) and Carleton University. Prof Bruce is now Entrepreneurship Ambassador for the Telfer School.
Dr Firestone has been an operations research engineer, real estate developer, hockey executive, professor of architecture, engineering, business and entrepreneurship, real estate broker (with Century 21 Explorer Realty Inc), writer, researcher, columnist and novelist. He is a peerless husband and father of five great kids and one fine grandson.
You can follow him on Twitter @ProfBruce and @Quantum_Entity and read his blogs at www.eqjournal.org and www.dramatispersonae.org. You can find his works at www.brucemfirestone.com and at www.learnbydoing.ca. You can engage with him on Facebook via—http://www.facebook.com/QuantumEntityTrilogy and http://www.facebook.com/Exploriem as well as via LinkedIn at—http://www.linkedin.com/in/profbruce. His real estate interests are at www.OttawaRealEstateNews.com and www.thelandstore.org. His YouTube channels include—http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfBruce and http://www.youtube.com/user/quantumentitytrilogy. You can also send the first four chapters of Quantum Entity Trilogy to your friends for free from: http://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/images/QuantumONE_CS_Third_Edition_First_Four_Chapters.pdf.
His current motto is: “Making Each Day Count”.
…
@ProfBruce
@Quantum_Entity
Dr Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, Phd. Founder, Ottawa Senators; Author, Quantum Entity Trilogy, Entrepreneurs Handbook II; Executive Director, Exploriem.org; Broker, Century 21 Explorer Realty Inc; Entrepreneurship Ambassador, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. 613.566.3436 X 200. bruce.firestone @ century21.ca
Follow Prof Bruce on Twitter @ProfBruce and @Quantum_Entity and read his blogs at www.EQJournal.org and www.dramatispersonae.org.
You can find his works at www.brucemfirestone.com and also at LearnByDoing.ca.
You can engage with him on Facebook via http://www.facebook.com/QuantumEntityTrilogy and http://www.facebook.com/Exploriem as well as via LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/profbruce.
His real estate interests are summarized at www.ottawarealestatenews.com and www.thelandstore.org.
YouTube channels include http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfBruce and http://www.youtube.com/user/quantumentitytrilogy.
You can also read the first four chapters of Quantum Entity Trilogy or send it to your friends for free from: http://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/images/QuantumONE_CS_Third_Edition_First_Four_Chapters.pdf
You can read the first two chapters of Entrepreneurs Handbook II or send it to your friends for free: http://www.brucemfirestone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/entrepreneurs-handbook-2013-edited-first-two-chapters-withCovers.pdf
Prof Bruce’s current motto is: “Making Each Day Count”
