Fond Farewell for Upstarts and Alpha Dogs!

This will be my last week blogging for BNET, which I've thoroughly enjoyed for the past year and a half. I'll miss my readers and fellow bloggers, and want to thank all of you for your readership, your comments, and your engagement via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and email. But most of all, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the entrepreneurs, the authors, and the experts who provided amazing content for Upstarts and Alpha Dogs. I hope that their wisdom made it a little easier for other business owners to start and grow their companies. In their honor, I thought I'd share some of my favorite posts:

• Gen Y: Employees From Hell or Your Best Secret Weapon? It's no secret that I'm a big fan of GenY, but I do understand the beef that many employers have with this generation. In this post, I shared advice from Neil Howe, author of Millennials in the Workplace: Human Resource Strategies For a New Generation on the best way to leverage GenY talents and, uh, peculiarities.

• How Does a Cupcake Company Rock the Inc. 500 List? I love companies that become extraordinarily successful with business models that are extraordinarily simple. This post about Crumbs, now the largest cupcake company in the country with over $23 million revenue, proves once and for all that it's not what you do, it's how you do it. It's all about execution (and butter-cream frosting).

• Do You Want to Be the Next Mark Zuckerberg? I Hope Not. In the wake of all hype that surrounded The Social Network, I thought it was important for young, aspiring entrepreneurs to keep their ambitions in perspective, and for the rest of us to understand that the portrayal of Zuckerberg in the movie doesn't typify all young entrepreneurs. In this post, I talk about the traits that my own work with young entrepreneurs has revealed.

• The Only Interview Tip You'll Ever Need: Don't Pee in Your Soup. If there's one thing that vexes every business owner on the planet, it's hiring the right people. In this post, Larry O'Toole the CEO of Gentle Giant Moving Company, shares his unconventional but effective technique for getting the right people on the bus.

• Small Business Owners: Stop Whining and Learn to Love Wal-Mart. As the owner of an independent bicycle shop in Branford, CT, you'd expect Chris Zane to hate Wal-Mart as much as the next Main Street business owner. But Zane has a radically different perspective on competing with big box retailers. Maybe that's why he's left most of his independent competitors in the dust.

• The Weirdest Interview Advice You'll Ever Get: Don't Ask Questions. Rich Sheridan of Menlo Innovations thinks that traditional interviews "are all about two people sitting across from each other, lying to each other." I thought his alternative - a method for teasing out the characteristics he values most in employees without asking a single quesion - was brilliant.

• To Hell With Resolutions: What's on Your "Stop Doing" List? Every time I hear Jim Collins speak, I come away inspired. "One key decision about what to stop doing might have as much impact as five new initiatives," Collins wrote several years ago on his blog. So I asked several business owners what was on their "stop doing" list. My favorite: Stop getting distracted by the small stuff. Amen!

• The Top 10 Best Ways To Fail as an Entrepreneur. The thing I love most about entrepreneurs is that they while they love to talk about their successes, they're also very willing to tell you all about the times they've failed and what they learned (politicians, please take note). They understand that an entrepreneurial journey without failure is one that is also devoid of risk and challenge and, hence, vast opportunity.

• 10 Innovative Mompreneurs and How Their Businesses Were Born. A HARO query for inspiring "mompreneur" stories resulted in a completed flooded inbox! The ten moms that we chose for this gallery took problems in their own lives, came up with solutions, and created companies that are having a positive impact on parents and children worldwide.

• Can You Train Yourself to Be the Next Steve Jobs? Okay, you're probably not going to be the next Steve Jobs. But you can learn to think like he does. Jeff Dyer, co-author with Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen of The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators, makes a pretty strong case that innovators aren't born that way. They're creative and innovative because they practice a handful of behaviors that the rest of us neglect. Nature may play a role, but nurture tips the scales.

Image courtesy of Flick user Lisandro M. Enrique, CC 2.0