2.2: Soil Classification and Mapping
Learning Objectives
- Become familiar with the 12 soil orders.
- Understand the structure of Soil Taxonomy .
- Become familiar with the contents of a county soil survey report.
- Use a soil survey report for land use evaluation.
The word, “taxonomy” is based on the Greek words “taxis”, meaning arrangement; and “nomia”, meaning method. In biology, taxonomy refers to a hierarchical system in which organisms are grouped based on shared characteristics, with domains and kingdoms at the top of the hierarchy, and genus and species at the lowest levels. Similarly, Soil Taxonomy is a hierarchical system used to group soils based on observable or measurable characteristics. A common application of soil classification (the act of identifying the taxonomic classification for a given soil) is to develop models of how soils of different classifications associate with one another within a landscape, which can eventually be used in soil mapping. The primary concepts of soil classification using Soil Taxonomy will be reviewed in this lab, followed by an overview of the Web Soil Survey (United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2016).
Materials
- Four soil monoliths (Crete, Clark, Morrill, and Chase soil series)
- Printed county soil survey reports
- Computer with internet access and a projector
Note
For this lab, you will need to bring a laptop or tablet to use. If you do not have a laptop or tablet, please share with a partner.
Recommended Reading
- Illustrated Guide to Soil Taxonomy (Soil Survey Staff, 2015)
- From the Surface Down: An Introduction to Soil Surveys for Agronomic Use (USDA NRCS, 2010)
Prelab Assignment
Using the assigned readings and the introduction to this lab, consider the questions listed below. These definitions/questions will provide a concise summary of the major concepts addressed in the lab. They are also relevant to the soil survey report and are useful study notes for exams.
- Explain the difference between a profile, a pedon, and a polypedon.
-
Describe the key properties or diagnostic features for each of the following diagnostic epipedons:
- Mollic:
- Umbric:
- Histic:
- Ochric:
-
Describe the key properties or diagnostic features of the following diagnostic subsurface horizons:
- Argillic:
- Kandic:
- Natric:
- Calcic:
- Spodic:
- Oxic:
- Cambic:
- List the soil moisture regimes from dries to wettest, and note the criteria for each.
- Explain the difference between a soil phase and a soil consociation.
- What are the 12 soil orders? Describe the key properties or diagnostic features of each.
- What are the six formal categories of S oil T axonomy ?
Introduction
Soils can vary widely in their properties, and each has a unique arrangement of layers or horizons. The soil profile description provides the information that distinguishes one soil from another. Review the following example of a profile description, and note the explanation of terms in Table 4.1.
Harney silt loam [adapted from the National Cooperative Soil Survey (1997)]
- Ap – 0 to 9 in; dark grayish brown (10YR 4/2) silt loam, very dark grayish brown (10YR 3/2) moist; moderate medium granular structure; slightly hard, very friable; many fine roots; slightly acid; clear smooth boundary. (4 to 14 in thick)
- AB – 9 to 12 in; dark grayish brown (10YR 4/2) silt loam, very dark grayish brown (10YR 3/2) moist; moderate fine subangular blocky structure; hard, friable; many fine roots; neutral; clear smooth boundary. (0 to 10 in thick)
- Bt1 – 12 to 18 in; grayish brown (10YR 5/2) silty clay loam, dark grayish brown (10YR 4/2) moist; moderate medium subangular blocky structure; very hard, very firm; few fine roots; moderately alkaline; clear smooth boundary.
- Bt2 – 18 to 28 in; grayish brown (10YR 5/2) silty clay loam, dark grayish brown (10YR 4/2) moist; strong medium subangular blocky structure; very hard, very firm; few fine roots; moderately alkaline; gradual smooth boundary. (Combined thickness of the Bt horizon is 10 to 26 in)
- BCk2 – 8 to 35 in; brown (10YR 5/3) silty clay loam, brown (10YR 4/3) moist; moderate medium subangular blocky structure; hard, firm; few fine roots; many soft accumulations of carbonates; strong effervescence; moderately alkaline; gradual smooth boundary. (0 to 16 in thick)
- Ck3 – 5 to 47 in; pale brown (10YR 6/3) silt loam, brown (10YR 5/3) moist; massive; slightly hard, friable; common soft accumulations of carbonates; strong effervescence; moderately alkaline; gradual smooth boundary. (0 to 20 in thick)
- C – 47 to 60 in; pale brown (10YR 6/3) silt loam, brown (10YR 5/3) moist; massive; slightly hard, friable; strong effervescence; moderately alkaline.
| Morphological property | Description | Morphological property | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horizon designation | Ap | Structure grade | Moderate |
| Upper depth | 0 in | Structure size | Medium |
| Lower depth | 9 in | Structure type | Granular |
| Color name | Dark grayish brown | Moist consistence | Very friable |
| Munsell hue | 10YR | Roots | Many fine roots |
| Munsell value | 4 | pH | Slightly acid |
| Munsell chroma | 2 | Boundary | Clear smooth |
| Textural class | Silt loam |
Table adapted from King et al. (2003).
Completing a soil profile description involves a systematic approach:
- Observing the landscape setting.
- Examining the morphological features like texture, structure, color, consistence, etc. of the soil to distinguish any layers or horizons
- Describing in detail the texture, structure, color, consistence, and other important features of each horizon.
- Assigning horizon designations to each layer.
- Classifying the soil on the basis of its morphology and horizonation.
Soil Morphology and Land Use
Criteria that rate soils for a particular use are important to land use planning and land management decisions. Guidelines based on these criteria facilitate uniform and consistent land evaluations. Soil-based criteria can be developed for nearly any land use. To prepare a soil rating scheme, the following are required:
- Precise definition of the land use
- A list of soil properties affecting the use
- Limits for each soil property that would be favorable or unfavorable for the land use.
A comprehensive classification system is important for any science: soil science, plant science, biology, geology, among many others. Effective taxonomy allows us to organize knowledge and learn new relationships. Soil T axonomy helps in extrapolating soil management research among similar soils around the world. Soil T axonomy is a quantitative system based on soil properties that can be observed or measured, organized in a hierarchy based on six categories beginning with 12 broad soil orders and narrowing in specificity to more than 23,000 series. The following diagram illustrates the organization of a taxonomic name by category.
Table 4.2 Simplified key to the 12 soil orders
| Order | Major Diagnostic Features | Formative Element |
|---|---|---|
| Gelisols | Soils with permafrost or gelic material within 100 cm | el |
| Histosols |
Other soils with >30% organic matter (>12% organic carbon) content to a depth of 40 cm or
more |
ist |
| Spodosols | Other soils with a spodic horizon (illuvial humus, iron) within a depth of 200 cm | od |
| Andisols |
Other soils with andic soil properties (low density, volcanic glass, pumice, etc.) in >= 50% of
the upper 60 cm |
and |
| Oxisols |
Other soils with an oxic horizon, or containing more than 40% clay in the surface 18 cm and
a kandic horizon with less than 10% weatherable minerals (highly weathered) |
ox |
| Vertisols |
Other soils containing more than 30% clay in all horizons and cracks that open and close
periodically (shrinking/swelling) |
ert |
| Aridisols | Other soils with some diagnostic subsoil horizon(s) and an aridic soil moisture regime | id |
| Ultisols |
Other soils with an argillic or kandic horizon and a base saturation at pH 8.2 of <35% at a
depth of 180 cm |
ult |
| Mollisols |
Other soils with a Mollic epipedon and a base saturation at pH 7 of 50% in all depths
above 180 cm |
oll |
| Alfisols |
Other soils with an argillic, kandic, or natric horizon (and a base saturation at pH 8.2 of >35%
at a depth of 180 cm) |
alf |
| Inceptisols | Other soils with an umbric, mollic, or plaggen epipedon or a cambic horizon | ept |
| Entisols | Other soils | ent |
The formative elements are used in the names of suborders and lower taxonomic levels. (Table courtesy of R. Weil)
Many other formative elements can specify unique soil properties at each taxonomic level. Each formative element has a connotation for a given soil. These connotations of the formative elements used for suborders and great groups are listed in Table 4.3 and Table 4.4.
Table 4.3. Formative elements used to identify various suborders in Soil Taxonomy.
| Formative Element | Connotation | Formative Element | Connotation |
|---|---|---|---|
| alb |
Presence of albic horizon (a
bleached eluvial horizon) |
hist | Presence of histic epipedon |
| anthr |
Presence of anthropic or plaggen
epipedon |
hum | Presence of organic matter |
| aqu |
Characteristics associated with
wetness |
orth | The common ones |
| ar | Mixed horizons | per |
Of year-round humid climates,
perudic moisture regime |
| arg |
Presence of argillic horizon (a
horizon with illuvial clay) |
psamm | Sand textures |
| calc | Presence of calcic horizon | rend | Rendzinalike-high in carbonates |
| camb | Presence of cambric horizon | sal | Presence of salic (saline) horizon |
| cry | cold | sapr | Most decomposed stage |
| dur | Presence of a duripan | torr | Usually dry |
| fibr | Least decomposed stage | turb | Cryoturbation |
| fluv | Floodplains | ud | Of humid climates |
| fol | Mass of leaves | ust | Of dry climates, usually hot in summer |
| gyps | Presence of gypsic horizon | vitr | Resembling glass |
| hem | Intermediate stage of decomposition | xer | Dry summers, moist winters |
Table from King et al. (2003)
Table 4.4 Formative elements for names of great groups and their connotations
| Formative Element | Connotation | Formative Element | Connotation |
|---|---|---|---|
| acr | Extreme weathering | hist | Presence of organic materials |
| aer | Chroma >2, non-reducing | fragi | Fragipan |
| agr | Agric horizon | hum | Humus |
| al | High aluminum, low iron | hydr | Water |
| alb | Albic horizon | kand | Low activity 1:1 silicate clay |
| and | Ando-like | lithic | Near stone |
| anhy | Anhydrous | luv, lu | Illuvial |
| aqu | Water saturated | melan | Melanic epipedon |
| aren | Sandy | molli | With a mollic epipedon |
| argi | Argillic horizon | natr | Presence of a natric horizon |
| calc, calci | Calcic horizon | pale | Old development |
| camb | Cambric horizon | petr | Cemented horizon |
| chrom | High chroma | plac | Thin pan |
| cry | Cold | plagg | Plaggen horizon |
| dur | Duripan | plinth | Plinthite |
| dystr, dys | Low base saturation | psamm | Sand texture |
| endo | Fully water saturated | quartz, quartzi | High quartz |
| epi | Perched water table | rhod | Dark red colors |
| eutr | High base saturation | sal | Salic horizon |
| ferr | Iron | sapr | Most decomposed |
| fibr | Least decomposed | somb | Dark horizon |
| fluv | Floodplain | sphagn | Sphagnum moss |
| fol | Mass of leaves | sulf | Sulfur |
| fragloss | See frag and gloss | torr | Usually dry and hot |
| fulv | light-colored melanic horizon | ud | Humid climates |
| gyps | gypsic horizon | umber | Umbric epipedon |
| gloss | Tongued | ust | Dry climate, usually hot in summer |
| hal | Salty | verm | Wormy or mixed by animals |
| hapl | Minimum horizon | vitr | Glass |
| hem | Intermediate decomposition | xer | Dry summers, moist winters |
Table adapted from King et al. (2003)
A complete taxonomic name communicates a great deal of information about the soil if we understand each part of the name. As an example of the quantitative information revealed in a taxonomic name, the following classification name will be dissected by category. Consider, for example, the Harney soil, with a taxonomic classification of fine, smectitic, mesic Typic Argiustoll.
Table 4.5.Translation of the taxonomic classification of the Harney Series.
| Categories | Properties connoted |
|---|---|
| ORDER: Mollisol |
Has a mollic epipedon and a base saturation of >50% to a
depth of 1.8 m from the soil surface or to an impermeable layer |
| SUBORDER: Ustoll |
has an ustic moisture regime; dry for as long as 90 days
cumulatively per year |
| GREAT GROUP: Argiustoll | has an argillic horizon |
| SUBGROUP: Typic Argiustoll |
typical of an Argiustoll, not intergrading toward another great
group condition |
| FAMILY: fine, smectitic, mesic |
the upper 50 cm of the argillic horizon has 35-60% clay; the
dominant clay minerals are smectite minerals (montmorillonite, beidellite, and nontronite); the mean annual soil temperature at 50 cm is 8°C to 15°C (47°F to 59°F) |
| SERIES: Harney |
differs from soils in the same family in based on color, parent
material (loess), and calcium accumulation below 28 in. |
Table courtesy of C. J. Moorberg, adapted from King et al. (2003)
Activity 1: Practice Key to Soil Orders
Now that you have studied the characteristics of the 12 soil orders, enter the most appropriate soil order name in each rectangle.
Activity 2: Structure of
Soil Taxonomy
To illustrate the structure of Soil Taxonomy , separate a complete taxonomic name into the six categories. Follow the example of the Harney silt loam in figure 4.2.
Colby
Taxonomic Name: Fine-silty, mixed, superactive, calcareous, mesic Aridic Ustorthents
| Order | |
|---|---|
| Suborder | |
| Great Group | |
| Subgroup | |
| Family | |
| Series |
Goessel
Taxonomic Name: Fine, smectitic, mesic Typic Haplusterts
| Order | |
|---|---|
| Suborder | |
| Great Group | |
| Subgroup | |
| Family | |
| Series |
Wymore
Taxonomic Name: Fine, smectitic, mesic Aquertic Argiudolls
| Order | |
|---|---|
| Suborder | |
| Great Group | |
| Subgroup | |
| Family | |
| Series |
Activity 3: Interpreting Taxonomy
As a further exercise in understanding taxonomic names, complete the following questions. Use the list of taxonomic names of soils representative of Mollisols from the prairie pothole region of Iowa below to answer these questions.
The Des Moines lobe of the Wisconsin glaciation covered north-central Iowa with a deep layer of glacial deposits, and provides a good example of how taxonomic names depict important soil properties. The Clarion-Nicollet-Webster-Glenco topo-sequence, or “catena” (Figure 4.4), illustrates how Soil Taxonomy reflects wetness, or depth to a water table.
Fill in the subgroup taxonomic name for soils in Table 4.6, and study how the terms change with wetness.
- Clarion series: Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Hapludolls
- Nicollet series: Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Aquic Hapludolls
- Webster series: Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Endoaquolls
- Glencoe series: Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Cumulic Endoaquolls
| Series | Drainage Class | Depth to Seasonal High Water Table | Subgroup Taxonomic Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarion | Moderately Well | 61 - 102 cm (24 - 48 in) | |
| Nicollet | Somewhat Poorly | 30 – 61 cm (12 – 24 in) | |
| Webster | Poorly | < 30 cm (< 12 in) | |
| Glencoe | Very Poorly |
< 30 cm (< 12 in), and
accumulation of organic matter |
Table courtesy of C. J. Moorberg
Notice that the wetter the drainage class (that is, the shallower the depth to the seasonal high water table), the higher the “aqu” formative element becomes in the overall classification. That is because Soil Taxonomy prioritizes soil management considerations. The depth to the seasonal high water table would be a management concern for most land uses for the Nicollet, Webster, and Glencoe series; it would be of less concern for the Clarion series, and thus “aqu” is not included in the classification.
Also note that for the Glencoe series, in addition to having the “aqu” formative element as part of the suborder, the “cumulic” formative element has been designated in the subgroup. That formative element alludes to a “thickened epipedon” caused by the accumulation of organic matter. Because the water table is so shallow, little oxygen is available at the surface for a significant portion of the growing season. This slows decomposition, allowing organic matter to build, thus creating a thickened epipedon with lots of organic matter.
Activity 4: Practicing Soil Taxonomy Interpretations with State Soils of the US
State soils have been selected for all 50 states and three territories in the U.S. The group of soils represents a diverse sample of soil conditions and classifications. It serves as an interesting focus for a little practice at deciphering and understanding Soil Taxonomy . Use the attached list of state soils in Table 4.7 along with Table 4.2, Table 4.3, and Table 4.4 to answer the following questions:
What is the most commonly recognized ORDER among the state soils?
Which of the soil ORDERS is not represented in the list of state soils?
How many Oxisols are represented by the 53 soils?
What is the complete SUBORDER name for the state soil of Alaska?
How many Vertisols are represented in the state soils?
In what soil property does the Downer soils of New Jersey differ from the Greenwich soils or Deleware?
The state soil of South Carolina has a soil condition identified by its great group. What element is present in the upper 50 cm of this soil? (Hint: use Table 4.4)
What is the complete taxanomic name for the state soil of Kansas?
Table 4.7. Soil Taxonomy classifications of state soils of the U.S.
| Series | State | Family Classification |
|---|---|---|
| Tanana | AK | coarse-loamy, mixed, superactive, subgelic Typic Aquiturbels |
| Bama | AL | fine-loamy, siliceous, subactive, thermic Typic Paleudults |
| Stuttgart | AR | fine, smectitic, thermic Albaquultic Hapludalfs |
| Casa Grande | AZ | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, hyperthermic Typic Natrargids |
| San Joaquin | CA | fine, mixed, active, thermic Abruptic Durixeralfs |
| Seitz | CO | clayey-skeletal, smectitic Ustic Glossocryalfs |
| Windsor | CT | mixed, mesic Typic Udipsamments |
| Greenwich | DE | coarse-loamy, mixed, semiactive, mesic Typic Hapludults |
| Myakka | FL | sandy, siliceous, hyperthermic Aeric Alaquods |
| Tifton | GA | fine-loamy, kaolinitic, thermic Plinthic Kandiudults |
| Akina | GU | very-fine, kaolinitic, isohyperthermic Inceptic Haplustox |
| Hilo | HI |
medial over hydrous, ferrihydritic, isohyperthermic Acrudoxic
Hydrudands |
| Tama | IA | fine-silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Argiudolls |
| Threebear | ID |
medial over loamy, amorphic over mixed, superactive, frigid
Oxyaquic Udivitrands |
| Drummer | IL | fine-silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Endoaquolls |
| Miami | IN | fine-loamy, mixed, active, mesic Oxyaquic Hapludalfs |
| Harney | KS | fine, smectitic, mesic Typic Argiustolls |
| Crider | KY | fine-silty, mixed, active, mesic Typic Paleudalfs |
| Ruston | LA | fine-loamy, siliceous, semiactive, thermic Typic Paleudults |
| Paxton | MA | coarse-loamy, mixed, active, mesic Oxyaquic Dystrudepts |
| Sassafras | MD | fine-loamy, siliceous, semiactive, mesic Typic Hapludults |
| Chesuncook | ME | coarse-loamy, isotic, frigid Aquic Haplorthods |
| Kalkaska | MI | sandy, isotic, frigid Typic Haplorthods |
| Lester | MN | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Mollic Hapludalfs |
| Menfro | MO | fine-silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Hapludalfs |
| Natchez | MS | coarse-silty, mixed, superactive, thermic Typic Eutrudepts |
| Scobey | MT | fine, smectitic, frigid Aridic Argiustolls |
| Cecil | NC | fine, kaolinitic, thermic Typic Kanhapludults |
| Williams | ND | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, frigid Typic Argiustolls |
| Holdrege | NE | fine-silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Argiustolls |
| Marlow | NH | coarse-loamy, isotic, frigid Oxyaquic Haplorthods |
| Downer | NJ | coarse-loamy, siliceous, semiactive, mesic Typic Hapludults |
| Panistaja | NM | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Ustic Haplargids |
| Orovada | NV |
coarse-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Durinodic Xeric
Haplocambids |
| Honeoye | NY | fine-loamy, mixed, semiactive, mesic Glossic Hapludalfs |
| Miamian | OH | fine, mixed, active, mesic Oxyaquic Hapludalfs |
| Port | OR | fine-silty, mixed, superactive, thermic Cumulic Haplustolls |
| Hazleton | PA | loamy-skeletal, siliceous, active, mesic Typic Dystrudepts |
| Bayamon | PR | very-fine, kaolinitic, isohyperthermic Typic Hapludox |
| Narragansett | RI |
coarse-loamy over sandy or sandy-skeletal, mixed, active, mesic
Typic Dystrudepts |
| Bohicket | SC | fine, mixed, superactive, nonacid, thermic Typic Sulfaquents |
| Houdek | SD | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Argiustolls |
| Dickson | TN | fine-silty, siliceous, semiactive, thermic Glossic Fragiudults |
| Houston Black | TX | fine, smectitic, thermic Udic Haplusterts |
| Taylorsflat | UT | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Xeric Haplocalcids |
| Pamunkey | VA | fine-loamy, mixed, semiactive, thermic Ultic Hapludalfs |
| Victory | VI |
loamy-skeletal, mixed, superactive, isohyperthermic Typic
Haplustepts |
| Tunbridge | VT | coarse-loamy, isotic, frigid Typic Haplorthods |
| Tokul | WA | medial, amorphic, mesic Aquic Vitrixerands |
| Antigo | WI |
coarse-loamy over sandy or sandy-skeletal, mixed, superactive,
frigid Haplic Glossudalfs |
| Monongahela | WV | fine-loamy, mixed, semiactive, mesic Typic Fragiudults |
| Forkwood | WY | fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Ustic Haplargids |
Table courtesy of J. Kleiss and D. Lindbo
Activity 5: Soil Survey Reports
As an introduction to soil reports, look through a typical printed county soil survey report; take note of the manual’s organization and the extensive content. The report begins with some background information on the county, along with an overview of how the survey was conducted. The county soil conditions are described, and the soil mapping units are discussed in detail. A colored map displays these general soil units.
Following the brief overview are detailed soil map unit descriptions. These show the symbol that is on the soil map, the dominant soil series, topsoil texture and range of slope found in the unit. The descriptions of each map unit details the landscape setting, general properties, and major use and management considerations. If other soils are present in the map unit, this is an important part of map unit description. The next section of the soil report offers specific use and management suggestions and discusses how specific types of land use ratings were formulated. This is followed with an overview of what specific kinds of soil data are included.
Specific information on soil classification and detailed profile descriptions for each soil are followed by a glossary of terms used in the report. A sequence of tables provides detailed ratings on a wide range of land uses. This interpretative information is offered for each soil map unit. The last section of the report shows the soil maps on an aerial photograph base.
To become familiar with county soil survey reports select one provided and review the table of contents and the summary list of tables. Leaf through the report and note the following sections:
- Map Unit descriptions
- Use and management of soils
- Classification and profile descriptions
- Interpretive tables
- General soil map
- Soil legend
- Soil maps
The United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service (USDA NRCS) today provides these soil surveys in a digital format through the Web Soil Survey (United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2016). The Web Soil Survey provides all the information previously contained in the county soil survey reports. It also contains additional tools and information that has not been available in printed versions of the soil surveys. Another advantage of the Web Soil Survey is that the information contained in it can be updated as needed, instead of being updated following new surveys of the same county, which take 30 to 60 years! Your instructor will walk you through some of the main features of the Web Soil Survey and show you how to request a PDF copy of a soil survey report for a designated area. You will use these skills for your Soil Survey Report assignment.
Assignment: Soil Survey Report
For this lab, you will be preparing a soil survey report. The report assignment will be provided to you at the beginning of the lab. Your instructor will go over what to include in the report and where to collect the necessary information from the Web Soil Survey.
Subsequent Lab Set-Up
Some activities require preparation beyond the lab period and must be set up ahead of time. The soil texture by hydrometer activity in the Soil Texture and Structure lab involves dispersing soil particles chemically, which requires time for the reactions to take place. We will do this now, so the samples are ready next week.
For each of the three soils provided, do the following:
Weigh out 30.0 g of dry soil (assume oven-dry) into a 250-ml Erlenmeyer flask.
Wash sides of flask with distilled water from a wash bottle.
Add 100 ml of distilled water using a graduated cylinder. Then add 10 ml of sodium hexametaphosphate solution (500 g/L) from the dispenser on the sodium hexametaphosphate bottle.
Swirl to mix.
Wash sides of flask with distilled water from a wash bottle.
Cover the flask with Parafilm and label the flask with your lab section, table number, and soil type. Store the flasks in the location specified by your instructor for the next laboratory period.


3.11: In Closing
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In this chapter, we visited various aspects of the early childhood teaching profession. We focused on clarifying your “why”, who the children, families, and teachers are, what is needed to be a successful early childhood professional, when to get started, where to access information and how to become the best professional you can be.
We focused on many questions throughout this chapter. The remaining chapters will focus on “how”. In Chapter 4 (Observation and Assessment), you will discover how to meaningfully observe and assess children in order to provide quality learning experiences and environments that meet their individual and group needs.


9: Electrochemistry
Electrochemistry deals with chemical reactions that produce electricity and the changes associated with the passage of electrical current through matter. The reactions involve electron transfer, and so they are oxidation-reduction (or redox) reactions. Many metals may be purified or electroplated using electrochemical methods. Devices such as automobiles, smartphones, electronic tablets, watches, pacemakers, and many others use batteries for power. Batteries use chemical reactions that produce electricity spontaneously and that can be converted into useful work. All electrochemical systems involve the transfer of electrons in a reacting system. In many systems, the reactions occur in a region known as the cell, where the transfer of electrons occurs at electrodes.
-
- 9.1: Balancing Oxidation-Reduction Reactions
- An electric current consists of moving charge. The charge may be in the form of electrons or ions. Current flows through an unbroken or closed circular path called a circuit. The current flows through a conducting medium as a result of a difference in electrical potential between two points in a circuit. Electrical potential has the units of energy per charge. In SI units, charge is measured in coulombs (C), current in amperes, and electrical potential in volts.
-
- 9.2: Galvanic Cells
- Electrochemical cells typically consist of two half-cells. The half-cells separate the oxidation half-reaction from the reduction half-reaction and make it possible for current to flow through an external wire. One half-cell contains the anode. Oxidation occurs at the anode. The anode is connected to the cathode in the other half-cell. Reduction occurs at the cathode. Adding a salt bridge completes the circuit allowing current to flow.
-
- 9.3: Standard Reduction Potentials
- Assigning the potential of the standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) as zero volts allows the determination of standard reduction potentials, E°, for half-reactions in electrochemical cells. As the name implies, standard reduction potentials use standard states (1 bar or 1 atm for gases; 1 M for solutes, often at 298.15 K) and are written as reductions (where electrons appear on the left side of the equation).
-
- 9.4: The Nernst Equation
- Electrical work is the negative of the product of the total charge (Q) and the cell potential (Ecell). The total charge can be calculated as the number of moles of electrons (n) times the Faraday constant (F = 96,485 C/mol e−). Electrical work is the maximum work that the system can produce and so is equal to the change in free energy. Thus, anything that can be done with or to a free energy change can also be done to or with a cell potential.
-
- 9.5: Batteries and Fuel Cells
- Batteries are galvanic cells, or a series of cells, that produce an electric current. When cells are combined into batteries, the potential of the battery is an integer multiple of the potential of a single cell. There are two basic types of batteries: primary and secondary. Primary batteries are “single use” and cannot be recharged. Dry cells and (most) alkaline batteries are examples of primary batteries. The second type is rechargeable and is called a secondary battery.
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- 9.6: Electrolysis
- Using electricity to force a nonspontaneous process to occur is electrolysis. Electrolytic cells are electrochemical cells with negative cell potentials (meaning a positive Gibbs free energy), and so are nonspontaneous. Electrolysis can occur in electrolytic cells by introducing a power supply, which supplies the energy to force the electrons to flow in the nonspontaneous direction. Electrolysis is done in solutions, which contain enough ions so current can flow.


17.5: The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic Citizens
As white Americans pushed west, they not only collided with Indian tribes but also with Hispanic Americans and Chinese immigrants. Hispanics in the Southwest had the opportunity to become American citizens at the end of the Mexican-American war, but their status was markedly second-class. Chinese immigrants arrived en masse during the California Gold Rush and numbered in the hundreds of thousands by the late 1800s, with the majority living in California, working menial jobs. These distinct cultural and ethnic groups strove to maintain their rights and way of life in the face of persistent racism and entitlement. But the large number of white settlers and government-sanctioned land acquisitions left them at a profound disadvantage. Ultimately, both groups withdrew into homogenous communities in which their language and culture could survive.
CHINESE IMMIGRANTS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
The initial arrival of Chinese immigrants to the United States began as a slow trickle in the 1820s, with barely 650 living in the U.S. by the end of 1849. However, as gold rush fever swept the country, Chinese immigrants, too, were attracted to the notion of quick fortunes. By 1852, over 25,000 Chinese immigrants had arrived, and by 1880, over 300,000 Chinese lived in the United States, most in California. While they had dreams of finding gold, many instead found employment building the first transcontinental railroad (Figure 17.5.1). Some even traveled as far east as the former cotton plantations of the Old South, which they helped to farm after the Civil War. Several thousand of these immigrants booked their passage to the United States using a “credit-ticket,” in which their passage was paid in advance by American businessmen to whom the immigrants were then indebted for a period of work. Most arrivals were men: Few wives or children ever traveled to the United States. As late as 1890, less than 5 percent of the Chinese population in the U.S. was female. Regardless of gender, few Chinese immigrants intended to stay permanently in the United States, although many were reluctantly forced to do so, as they lacked the financial resources to return home.
Prohibited by law since 1790 from obtaining U.S. citizenship through naturalization, Chinese immigrants faced harsh discrimination and violence from American settlers in the West. Despite hardships like the special tax that Chinese miners had to pay to take part in the Gold Rush, or their subsequent forced relocation into Chinese districts, these immigrants continued to arrive in the United States seeking a better life for the families they left behind. Only when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade further immigration from China for a ten-year period did the flow stop.
The Chinese community banded together in an effort to create social and cultural centers in cities such as San Francisco. In a haphazard fashion, they sought to provide services ranging from social aid to education, places of worship, health facilities, and more to their fellow Chinese immigrants. But only American Indians suffered greater discrimination and racial violence, legally sanctioned by the federal government, than did Chinese immigrants at this juncture in American history. As Chinese workers began competing with white Americans for jobs in California cities, the latter began a system of built-in discrimination. In the 1870s, white Americans formed “anti-coolie clubs” (“coolie” being a racial slur directed towards people of any Asian descent), through which they organized boycotts of Chinese-produced products and lobbied for anti-Chinese laws. Some protests turned violent, as in 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where tensions between white and Chinese immigrant miners erupted in a riot, resulting in over two dozen Chinese immigrants being murdered and many more injured.
Slowly, racism and discrimination became law. The new California constitution of 1879 denied naturalized Chinese citizens the right to vote or hold state employment. Additionally, in 1882, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbade further Chinese immigration into the United States for ten years. The ban was later extended on multiple occasions until its repeal in 1943. Eventually, some Chinese immigrants returned to China. Those who remained were stuck in the lowest-paying, most menial jobs. Several found assistance through the creation of benevolent associations designed to both support Chinese communities and defend them against political and legal discrimination; however, the history of Chinese immigrants to the United States remained largely one of deprivation and hardship well into the twentieth century.
The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum provides a context for the role of the Chinese who helped build the railroads. What does the site celebrate, and what, if anything, does it condemn?
Below is a description of the construction of the railroad in 1867. Note the way it describes the scene, the laborers, and the effort.
The cars now (1867) run nearly to the summit of the Sierras. . . . four thousand laborers were at work—one-tenth Irish, the rest Chinese. They were a great army laying siege to Nature in her strongest citadel. The rugged mountains looked like stupendous ant-hills. They swarmed with Celestials, shoveling, wheeling, carting, drilling and blasting rocks and earth, while their dull, moony eyes stared out from under immense basket-hats, like umbrellas. At several dining camps we saw hundreds sitting on the ground, eating soft boiled rice with chopsticks as fast as terrestrials could with soup-ladles. Irish laborers received thirty dollars per month (gold) and board; Chinese, thirty-one dollars, boarding themselves. After a little experience the latter were quite as efficient and far less troublesome.
—Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi
Several great American advancements of the nineteenth century were built with the hands of many other nations. It is interesting to ponder how much these immigrant communities felt they were building their own fortunes and futures, versus the fortunes of others. Is it likely that the Chinese laborers, many of whom died due to the harsh conditions, considered themselves part of “a great army”? Certainly, this account reveals the unwitting racism of the day, where workers were grouped together by their ethnicity, and each ethnic group was labeled monolithically as “good workers” or “troublesome,” with no regard for individual differences among the hundreds of Chinese or Irish workers.
HISPANIC AMERICANS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, promised U.S. citizenship to the nearly seventy-five thousand Hispanics now living in the American Southwest; approximately 90 percent accepted the offer and chose to stay in the United States despite their immediate relegation to second-class citizenship status. Relative to the rest of Mexico, these lands were sparsely populated and had been so ever since the country achieved its freedom from Spain in 1821. In fact, New Mexico—not Texas or California—was the center of settlement in the region in the years immediately preceding the war with the United States, containing nearly fifty thousand Mexicans. However, those who did settle the area were proud of their heritage and ability to develop rancheros of great size and success. Despite promises made in the treaty, these Californios—as they came to be known—quickly lost their land to white settlers who simply displaced the rightful landowners, by force if necessary. Repeated efforts at legal redress mostly fell upon deaf ears. In some instances, judges and lawyers would permit the legal cases to proceed through an expensive legal process only to the point where Hispanic landowners who insisted on holding their ground were rendered penniless for their efforts.
Much like Chinese immigrants, Hispanic citizens were relegated to the worst-paying jobs under the most terrible working conditions. They worked as peóns (manual laborers similar to slaves), vaqueros (cattle herders), and cartmen (transporting food and supplies) on the cattle ranches that white landowners possessed, or undertook the most hazardous mining tasks (Figure 17.5.2).
In a few instances, frustrated Hispanic citizens fought back against the white settlers who dispossessed them of their belongings. In 1889–1890 in New Mexico, several hundred Mexican Americans formed las Gorras Blancas (the White Caps) to try and reclaim their land and intimidate white Americans, preventing further land seizures. White Caps conducted raids of white farms, burning homes, barns, and crops to express their growing anger and frustration. However, their actions never resulted in any fundamental changes. Several White Caps were captured, beaten, and imprisoned, whereas others eventually gave up, fearing harsh reprisals against their families. Some White Caps adopted a more political strategy, gaining election to local offices throughout New Mexico in the early 1890s, but growing concerns over the potential impact upon the territory’s quest for statehood led several citizens to heighten their repression of the movement. Other laws passed in the United States intended to deprive Mexican Americans of their heritage as much as their lands. “Sunday Laws” prohibited “noisy amusements” such as bullfights, cockfights, and other cultural gatherings common to Hispanic communities at the time. “Greaser Laws” permitted the imprisonment of any unemployed Mexican American on charges of vagrancy. Although Hispanic Americans held tightly to their cultural heritage as their remaining form of self-identity, such laws did take a toll.
In California and throughout the Southwest, the massive influx of Anglo-American settlers simply overran the Hispanic populations that had been living and thriving there, sometimes for generations. Despite being U.S. citizens with full rights, Hispanics quickly found themselves outnumbered, outvoted, and, ultimately, outcast. Corrupt state and local governments favored whites in land disputes, and mining companies and cattle barons discriminated against them, as with the Chinese workers, in terms of pay and working conditions. In growing urban areas such as Los Angeles, barrios , or clusters of working-class homes, grew more isolated from the white American centers. Hispanic Americans, like the Native Americans and Chinese, suffered the fallout of the white settlers’ relentless push west.
Section Summary
In the nineteenth century, the Hispanic, Chinese, and white populations of the country collided. Whites moved further west in search of land and riches, bolstered by government subsidies and an inherent and unshakable belief that the land and its benefits existed for their use. In some ways, it was a race to the prize: White Americans believed that they deserved the best lands and economic opportunities the country afforded, and did not consider prior claims to be valid.
Neither Chinese immigrants nor Hispanic Americans could withstand the assault on their rights by the tide of white settlers. Sheer numbers, matched with political backing, gave the whites the power they needed to overcome any resistance. Ultimately, both ethnic groups retreated into urban enclaves, where their language and traditions could survive.
Review Questions
What brought the majority of Chinese immigrants to the U.S.?
gold
work opportunities on the railroads
the Homestead Act
Chinese benevolent associations
A
How were Hispanic citizens deprived of their wealth and land in the course of western settlement?
Indian raids
land seizures
prisoner of war status
infighting
B
Compare and contrast the treatment of Chinese immigrants and Hispanic citizens to that of Indians during the period of western settlement.
In all three cases, white settlers felt that they were superior to these ethnic groups and morally correct in their exploitation of the groups’ land and labor. Whether mining sacred Sioux reservation lands for gold or forcing Chinese immigrants to pay a special fine to mine for gold, white settlers were confident that their goal of Manifest Destiny gave them the right to do as they wished. Hispanic Americans, unlike Chinese immigrants and Indians, were allowed citizenship rights, although racist laws and corrupt judges severely curtailed these rights. Chinese immigrants were ultimately denied entry to the United States through the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Critical Thinking Questions
Describe the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. What effect did it have on Americans’ westward migration? How might the different groups that migrated have sought to apply this philosophy to their individual circumstances?
Compare the myth of the “Wild West” with its reality. What elements of truth would these stories have contained, and what was fabricated or left out? What was life actually like for cowboys, ranchers, and the few women present in mining towns or along the cattle range?
What were the primary methods that the U.S. government, as well as individual reformers, used to deal with the perceived Indian threat to westward settlement? In what ways were these methods successful and unsuccessful? What were their short-term and long-term effects on Native Americans?
Describe the ways in which the U.S. government, local governments, and/or individuals attempted to interfere with the specific cultural traditions and customs of Indians, Hispanics, and Chinese immigrants. What did these efforts have in common? How did each group respond?
In what ways did westward expansion provide new opportunities for women and African Americans? In what ways did it limit these opportunities?
Glossary
- las Gorras Blancas
- the Spanish name for White Caps, the rebel group of Hispanic Americans who fought back against the appropriation of Hispanic land by whites; for a period in 1889–1890, they burned farms, homes, and crops to express their growing anger at the injustice of the situation


8.6: The Role of Strategic Analysis in Formulating a Strategy
- Why is strategic analysis important to strategy formulation?
In the previous chapter, you read about the various levels of analysis that a manager carries out in order to understand their firm’s competitive environment. A strategic analysis of a firm’s external environment (the world, competitors) and internal environment (firm capabilities and resources) gives its managers a clear picture of what they have to work with and also what needs to be addressed when developing a plan for the firm’s success. Analysis comes early in the strategic process because the information a manager gets from the analysis informs the decision-making that follows. The information is so critical that entrepreneurs writing business plans (before the business even exists) do this analysis to understand if their business idea is feasible and to understand how to position their business relative to existing competitors or potential customers in order to maximize their odds of success. Exhibit 8.5 outlines just a few of the questions that strategic analysis tools can help answer.
Exhibit 8.5 Some Questions That Strategic Analysis Should Answer
For an example of how the strategic tools help inform decisions, look back at the Walt Disney mission and vision in Exhibit 8.4. Imagine if you were Mr. Walt Disney today, and you wanted to start a company with a vision of making people happy in the 21st century. What products or services would you plan to offer? A PESTEL analysis would tell you that technology is an important part of entertainment and that sociocultural trends include people’s preference for on-demand entertainment, to be convenient and compatible with their busy schedules. Disney’s mission statement is broad enough about products and services to include a wide variety of offerings (they are thinking about the future, too!), but if you were starting this company today, where would you start? Would you make movies for movie theaters or develop a way to offer video entertainment online? Would you make console video games or phone apps? Who would your competition be, and what do they offer? How could you offer something better or cheaper?
Managers learn about the conditions that their business will have to operate in by doing strategic analysis, and understanding those conditions is required in order to develop the plans and actions that will lead to success.
- What strategic analysis tools from the previous chapter would a manager use when planning a strategy for an existing business? What tools would be most helpful for a start-up business?


Positioning is a powerful tool, but when you position a product, service, or brand, the world doesn’t stand still. Market conditions change. Your customers and competitors change. You change.
Positioning should be designed to last. But for most offerings, you’ll eventually need to revisit your positioning strategy and consider whether to make adjustments. This process has a very logical name: repositioning. In some ways, repositioning is more challenging than initial positioning because you’re building on prior established work, trying to strengthen what’s working and fix what isn’t—it’s a bit like remodeling an old house instead of building one from scratch. In this next reading, you’ll learn more about repositioning, the associated risks and complexities, and the rationale for doing it in the first place.
Learning Activities
The learning activities for this section include the following:
- Reading: Repositioning
- Self Check: Repositioning


6.1: Introduction to International Management
Mike Schlater, Domino’s Pizza
Domino’s Pizza has more than 14,000 stores worldwide. As executive vice president of Domino’s Pizza’s international division, Mike Schlater is president of Domino’s Canada with more than 440 stores. Originally from Ohio, Schlater started his career with Domino’s as a pizza delivery driver and worked his way up into management. Schlater saved his earnings, and with some help from his brother, he was able to accept the opportunity to have the first international Domino’s franchise in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1983. Within weeks, Schlater’s store in Canada reached higher sales than his previous store in Ohio had ever attained.
However, it was not an easy start. Schlater faced a number of challenges going international. First, he had to identify the international suppliers and get them approved to sell their products to Domino’s. This shows one of the challenges that organizations face when entering new global markets. To meet quality standards designed to protect a brand, companies must undertake an extensive review of potential new suppliers to ensure consistent product quality.
Second, as discussed in this chapter, a major challenge when opening a business on foreign soil is negotiating the political, cultural, and economic differences of that country. Domino’s relies on local master franchisees to take advantage of their local expertise in dealing with marketing strategies, political and regulatory issues, and the local labor market. The master franchisees of Domino’s Pizza’s international business are individuals or entities who, under a specific licensing agreement with Domino’s, control all operations within a specific country. Such master franchisees have deep local knowledge that helped Domino’s succeed. For example, it takes local experience to know that only 30 percent of the people in Poland have phones, so carryout needs to be the focus of the business; that Turkey has changed its street names three times in the past 30 years, so delivery is much more challenging; or that, in Japanese, there is no word for pepperoni, the most popular topping worldwide. These are just a few of the challenges that Domino’s has had to overcome on the road to becoming the worldwide leader in the pizza delivery business. Under the leadership of people like Schlater, and with the help of dedicated, local master franchisees, Domino’s has been able to not only compete in, but lead the global pizza delivery market.
Such an impressive career path might seem like luck to some, but Schlater achieved his success due to determination and attention to detail. Additionally, despite such success, Schlater has been socially responsible. Consider that Schlater recently won $250,000 in a lottery. Since Schlater believes in philanthropy, he donated the entire amount to Cardinal Carter High School in his hometown. Over the years, Schlater has donated millions of dollars to foundations and charities, such as the London Health Sciences Foundation, because he now has the ability to indulge after spending decades climbing the corporate ladder at Domino’s Pizza. Such charitable focus has also shone light on his socially responsible tendencies, another critical aspect of success.
Schlater is now president of Domino’s of Canada, Ltd., which operates more than 440 stores located in every province, as well as the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Sources: “Domino’s Pizza Corporate Facts,” phx.corporate-ir.net, accessed June 20, 2017; Domino’s Canada website, https://www.dominos.ca , accessed June 20, 2017; Trevor Wilhelm, “Domino’s CEO, who lives in Leamington, will donate $250K lotto winnings to high school,” Windsor Star, February 27, 2015.
The above example shows that Domino’s has successfully managed global challenges to become successful internationally. For many business leaders over the past few decades, the business world was becoming “flat” because barriers to trade were slowly disappearing. The expectation was that soon global companies would operate unconstrained by national borders. However, recent trends suggest that the business world is now seeing a barrage of protectionism and nationalism as many countries and their leaders emphasize the negatives of globalization. Consider that the U.K. is currently experiencing the Brexit negotiations and a potential exit from the European Union. The European Union has provided the means to the U.K. to freely trade with a number of other European countries without hindrance. At the same time, rhetoric about policies and practices to protect local industries against global competition and to protect local jobs is increasing. But does this mean globalization is dead? Far from it—experts have analyzed recent trade data and shown that globalization is actually strengthening. The DHL Global Connected Index , which tracks the flow of capital, information, trade, and human resources, indicates that the degree of globalization continues to rise. 1 This finding suggests that any serious management scholar will need to be aware of the importance of international management and the need to be able to adapt practices to ensure that management of global operations goes smoothly.
No company is immune to the forces of globalization. Whether you run a small company based in Wisconsin or manage a Fortune 500 company, you are affected by global forces. You may compete with firms from China or India, have coworkers from Egypt, Brazil, or Germany, or have to negotiate with someone from Russia. This chapter will prepare you for the complexities of international management by discussing some of the crucial issues faced by managers of international companies today. The chapter begins by discussing some of the key factors in making the business world global today and why an understanding of international management is so critical. The chapter then explores the importance of national cultures because cross-cultural conflicts can make an international business difficult to navigate and manage. By understanding the countries and the cultures they find themselves in, international managers can better prepare to deal with such differences, including appropriate preparation for cross-cultural assignments, preferred leadership styles around the world, and the potential for stereotyping.
The chapter concludes with coverage about the various approaches to taking a company international, the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and the types of business strategies available to companies in the international arena.
References
1. Pankaj Ghemawat, “Globalization in the age of Trump,” Harvard Business Review , July-August, 2017, pp. 712-716.


6.5: Organizing Forces - Symmetry and Centricity
Centricity in post-tonal music can be established in a variety of ways, often simply by emphasis. When a particular pitch-class is regularly the lowest, highest, loudest, or longest in a passage, that pitch-class becomes something like a tonic.
Apart from these means, pitch and/or pitch-class symmetry represents a novel method by which post-tonal composers created centricity in their music. And the study of symmetry in general takes us far afield of the compositional techniques generally associated with common-practice tonal music.
Pitch Symmetry
Think of pitch symmetry in terms of a musical “mirror.” In the passage below — from Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta — the third violin (3. Vl.) plays a gesture comprising two descending pitch intervals: –5 followed by –1. That is mirrored by the fourth violin (4. Vl), who plays the same pitch intervals, only ascending: +5 followed by +1. Below the example, I’ve diagrammed the gestures in pitch space. And you can that when combined the two gestures create a symmetrical arch.
Bartók, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Pitch symmetry always implies an axis of symmetry . Maintaining our mirror metaphor, this is the place in pitch space where the mirror exists. In the case of the example above, the mirror is located at B4. Below, you’ll see the same gesture in the lower strings. The pitch-space line shows that it has a different axis of symmetry — around E2.
Pitch-Class Symmetry
Pitch-class symmetry is very similar to pitch symmetry, but understood in pitch-class space . Below you’ll see another passage from the same piece by Bartók. As above the lower strings have an ascending gesture that mirrors the descending gesture in the upper strings.
Mapping this on the pitch-class circle shows the passage’s pitch-class symmetry. Look at this circular diagram very carefully. You’ll notice that the passage is pitch-class symmetrical around both 2 and 8 . Unlike pitch space, pitch-class axes are always located at two different points in the pitch-class circle.


2.2.14: SDS-PAGE
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Learning Objectives
Goals:
- Prepare protein samples from transformed bacterial cells and perform a PAGE.
- Analyze PAGE products and identify proteins by molecular weight.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this lab, students will be able to:
- Explain how SDS-PAGE works.
- Run and analyze the results of a SDS-PAGE.
Introduction
Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis
Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is probably the most common analytical technique used to separate and characterize proteins. A solution of acrylamide and bisacrylamide is polymerized. Acrylamide alone forms linear polymers. The bisacrylamide introduces crosslinks between polyacrylamide chains. The 'pore size' is determined by the ratio of acrylamide to bisacrylamide, and by the concentration of acrylamide. A high ratio of bisacrylamide to acrylamide and a high acrylamide concentration cause low electrophoretic mobility. Polymerization of acrylamide and bisacrylamide monomers is induced by ammonium persulfate (APS), which spontaneously decomposes to form free radicals. TEMED, a free radical stabilizer, is generally included to promote polymerization.
The gels are usually prepared with the top portion of the gel under the sample wells made less dense than the remainder of the gel below that is intentionally made denser. The top portion is referred to as the “stacking gel” and the lower portion is termed the “running gel” or “separating gel”. The purpose of the stacking gel is to concentrate all of the different sized proteins into a compact horizontal zone by sandwiching them between a gradient of glycine molecules above and chloride ions below. This way most of the proteins will enter the denser resolving gel simultaneously before they begin to migrate downwards at different rates based on their size. This way, the bands are much clearer and better separated for visualization and analysis. Without the stacking gel, the proteins will produce a long smear through the resolving gel instead of tight distinct bands for us to analyze.
SDS-PAGE
Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) is an amphipathic detergent.  It binds non-covalently to proteins, where roughly one SDS molecule is attracted to every two amino acids. SDS causes proteins to denature and disassociate from each other (excluding covalent cross-linking) and essentially unravel into linear molecules. It also confers negative charge. In the presence of SDS, the intrinsic charge of a protein is masked. During SDS-PAGE, all proteins migrate towards the anode (the positively charged electrode). SDS-treated proteins have very similar charge-to-mass ratios, and similar shapes. During PAGE, the rate of migration of SDS-treated proteins is effectively determined by their unfolded length, which is related to their molecular weight.
Part I: SDS-PAGE
Materials
- Vertical gel electrophoresis chambers and gel cassette assembly (Bio-Rad Mini PROTEAN)
- Tris/Glycine/SDS Running Buffer
- Power supply
- Bio-Rad 10% precast polyacrylamide Mini PROTEAN TGX stain-free gels (8.6 X 6.7 cm)
- Gel loading guide
- Micropipettes with gel loading tips
- Protein samples
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Bio-Rad 2X Laemmli Sample Buffer (contains SDS and either sucrose or glycerol)
and 2-Mercaptoethanol (reduces disulfide bonds, disrupts protein cross-links)
and loading dye - Prestained protein molecular weight standards (already prepared in sample buffer)
Procedure
Sample Preparation
- Be sure to wear gloves.
- Prepare a hot water bath (100°C). Place some water in a 600 mL or larger beaker and microwave or leave on a hot plate to boil. (This can take 15 minutes or more.)
- Combine 10 µL of each protein sample with 20 µL of Laemmli sample buffer/Loading Dye in labeled screw-top microcentrifuge tubes.
- Boil the samples for no more than 5 minutes to fully denature the proteins.
- After boiling, leave the sample tubes at room temperature until ready to load onto the gel.
Preparation of the Gel and Electrophoresis Chamber
- Be sure to wear gloves.
- Remove the pre-cast gel from the packaging. Carefully remove the green strip from the bottom of the gel.
- Open the two green side clamps on the vertical gel cassette assembly.
- Place the pre-cast gel on one side of the cassette and use the clear buffer dam on the other side of the cassette. Then carefully close the green side clamps.
- Insert the cassette into the vertical gel chamber matching the color of the electrodes (red and black) with the color guides at the sides of the chamber.
- Fill the inside of the cassette with 1X Tris Glycine SDS PAGE buffer until the wells are submerged.
- Fill the bottom of the vertical gel chamber with 1X Tris Glycine SDS PAGE buffer up to the mark on the side for 1 to 2 gels.
Loading the samples into the Gel
- Place the yellow gel loading guide on the top of the cassette.
- Using gel loading tips, micropipette 10 µL of prepared protein MW standard into the first (#1), fifth (#5) and last (#10) lanes
- Using gel loading tips, micropipette 10 µL of each protein sample into each of the remaining wells (2-4; 6-9) of the gel. Note which sample is in which lane in your notebook.
Electrophoresis
- Place the lid on the vertical gel chamber
- Insert the red and black wires into the correct matching colored terminals on the power supply
- Plug in the power supply and turn on the power switch
- Select “Constant Voltage” and then adjust the voltage to 300 volts
- Press the run button
- Set a timer for 10 minutes
- If the smallest band of the protein marker has traveled down to 1 cm from the bottom edge of the gel, turn off the power and stop the run, otherwise continue the run until this is the case
- Unplug the power supply and wires from gel chamber
- Disassemble gel chamber and carefully remove gel
- Pour used buffer into a used buffer container – Do not pour down the sink!
- The gel can now be imaged on a gel documentation camera system or it has to go through stain/destain.
Study Questions
- What is SDS and why is it added to a protein sample prior to running a PAGE?
- Why is the protein heated for 5 minutes before being loaded into a gel?
- Which electrode does a protein run toward in a SDS-PAGE and why?
- What is the difference between a stacking gel and a separating gel?
- Given a gel, be able to analyze it using the molecular weight standard?


 Experiment shows that the system spontaneously changes composition. We write the overall chemical reaction as:
\[\mathrm{CH}_{3} \mathrm{COOC}_{2} \mathrm{H}_{5}+\mathrm{OH}^{-} \rightarrow \mathrm{CH}_{3} \mathrm{COO}^{-}+\mathrm{C}_{2} \mathrm{H}_{5} \mathrm{OH} \nonumber \]
In this connection we state that the reaction is driven by the affinity for spontaneous reaction leading to a change in chemical composition characterized by the extent of reaction, \(\xi\).


11.2: Defining Sustainability Innovation
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Learning Objectives
- Understand how sustainability innovation has been defined.
- Begin to apply the basic ideas and concepts of sustainability design.
Recognition that the global economy is processing the world’s natural resources and generating waste streams at an unprecedented scale and scope calls for the redesign of commercial activity. Reconfiguring how we conduct business and implementing business practices that preserve the world’s natural resources for today’s communities and the economic, environmental, and social health and vitality of future generations only recently has become a priority. This notion lies at the heart of sustainability. Sustainability in the business sense is not about altruism and doing what is right for its own sake. Businesses with successful sustainability strategies are profitable because they integrate consideration of clean design and resource conservation throughout product life cycles and supply chains in ways that make economic sense. Sustainability innovation is about defining economic development as the creation of private and social wealth to ultimately eliminate harmful impacts on ecological systems, human health, and communities.
Awareness of the problem of pollution and resource limits has existed for decades but until now only in fragmented ways across informed academic and scientific subcommunities. Today it is becoming self-evident that our past patterns of energy and material use must be transformed. While some still question the seriousness of the challenges, governments and companies are responding. Government is imposing more environmental, health, and safety regulatory constraints on business. However, while regulation may be an important part of problem solving, it is not the answer. Fortunately, businesses are stepping up to the challenge. In fact, the inherent inefficiencies and blind spots that are built into the accepted business and growth models that have been debated and discussed for many years are beginning to be addressed by business. Entrepreneurial innovators are creating solutions that move us away from needing regulation. In addition, recently the critiques have moved from periphery to mainstream as it has become increasingly clear to the educated public that the economic practices that brought us to this point are not sufficient to carry us forward. Since governments alone cannot solve the problems, it will take the ingenuity of people across sectors to generate progress. Sustainability innovation offers a frame for thinking about how entrepreneurial individuals and firms can contribute.
The new models of business sustainability are emerging. They are based on current science, pressure from governments, and citizen demand and envision a world in which human economic development can continue to be sustained by natural systems while delivering improved living standards for more people. That is the goal; however, it takes concrete actions striving toward that ideal to make headway. Those entrepreneurs and ventures embodying the ideal of sustainability have found creative ways to achieve financial success by offering products that improve our natural environment and protect and preserve human health, equity, and community vitality. We will now explore this term, sustainability, and its significance in entrepreneurial thinking.
General Definition
Sustainability innovation reflects the next generation of economic development thinking. It couples environmentalism’s protection of natural systems with the notion of business innovation while delivering essential goods and services that serve social goals of human health, equity, and environmental justice. It is the wave of innovation pushing society toward clean technology, the green economy, and clean commerce. It is the combined positive, pragmatic, and optimistic efforts of people around the world to refashion economic development into a process that addresses the fundamental challenges of poverty, environmental justice, and resource scarcity. At the organizational level, the term sustainability innovation applies to product/service and process design as well as company strategy.
Sustainability and sustainability innovation have been defined by different individuals representing diverse disciplines and institutions. Certain fundamentals lie at the concepts’ core, however, and we illuminate these fundamentals in the discussion that follows. Keep in mind that any given definition’s precision is less important than the vision and framework that guide actions in the direction of enduring healthy economic development. Later we will examine concepts and tools that are used to operationalize sustainability strategy and design. It is by combining existing definitions with an understanding of sustainability’s drivers and then studying how entrepreneurial innovators implement the concept that you gain the full appreciation for the change sustainability represents. Note that you will find the terms sustainability, sustainable business, and even sustainability innovation used loosely in the media and sometimes applied to activities that are only continued (“sustained”) as opposed to the meaning of sustainability we work with in this text. Our definition addresses the systemic endurance and smooth functioning of ecological systems and the preservation of carrying capacities, together with protection of human health, social justice, and vibrant communities. We are interested in entrepreneurial and innovative disruption that can accelerate progress along this path.
Sustainability: Variations on a Theme
Paul E. Gray, a former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), stated in 1989 that “furthering technological and economic development in a socially and environmentally responsible manner is not only feasible, it is the great challenge we face as engineers, as engineering institutions, and as a society.”Paul E. Gray, “The Paradox of Technological Development,” in Technology and Environment (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1989), 192–204. This was his expression of what it meant for MIT to pursue sustainability ideas.
Sustainability Defined by Chemical Engineers
A sustainable product or process is one that constrains resource consumption and waste generation to an acceptable level, makes a positive contribution to the satisfaction of human needs, and provides enduring economic value to the business enterprise.Bhavik R. Bakshi and Joseph Fiksel, “The Quest for Sustainability: Challenges for Process Systems. Engineering,” AIChE Journal 49, no. 6 (2003): 1350.
Sustainability Defined by The Natural Step
Pediatric cancer physician and researcher Karl-Henrik Robèrt, the founder of an educational foundation called The Natural Step that helps corporations and municipalities implement sustainability strategies, conveys sustainability this way: “Resource utilization should not deplete existing capital, that is, resources should not be used at a rate faster than the rate of replenishment, and waste generation should not exceed the carrying capacity of the surrounding ecosystem.”Karl-Heinrik Robert, The Natural Step: A Framework for Achieving Sustainability in Our Organizations (Cambridge, MA: Pegasus, 1997).
The Natural Step, a framework to guide decision making and an educational foundation with global reach based in Stockholm, Sweden, offers a scientific, consensus-based articulation of what it would mean for sustainability to be achieved by society and for humans to prosper and coexist compatibly with natural systems. Natural and man-made materials would not be extracted, distributed, and built up in the world at a rate exceeding the capacity of nature to absorb and regenerate those materials; habitat and ecological systems would be preserved; and actions that create poverty by undermining people’s capacity to meet fundamental human needs (for subsistence, protection, identity, or freedom) would not be pursued. These requisite system conditions acknowledge the physical realities of resource overuse and pollution as well as the inherent threat to social and political stability when human needs are systematically denied.
Sustainability Defined in a Business Operations Journal
The search for sustainability can lead to innovation that yields cost savings, new designs, and competitive advantage. Like the quality gurus who called for zero defects, the early adopters of the sustainability perspective may seem extreme in calling for waste-free businesses in which the nonproduct outputs become inputs for other products or services. But sustainability’s zero-waste goal offers a critical, underlying insight: health, environmental, and community social issues offer opportunities for businesses.Andrea L. Larson, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, and Richard R. Johnson, “Sustainable Business: Opportunity and Value Creation,” Interfaces: International Journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences 30, no. 3 (May/June 2000), 2.
Examining innovative leaders provides a window into the future through which we can see new possibilities for how goods and services can be delivered if sufficient human ingenuity is applied. The approach extends the premises of entrepreneurial innovation, a long-standing driver of social and economic change, to consider natural system viability and community health. Drawing on systems thinking, ecological and environmental health sciences, and the equitable availability of clean commerce economic development opportunities, sustainability innovation offers a fast-growing market space within which entrepreneurial leaders are offering solutions and paths forward to address some of society’s most critical challenges.
It is important to recognize sustainability’s cross-disciplinary approach. Sustainability in business is about designing strategies for value creation through innovation using an interdisciplinary lens. Specialization and grounding in established disciplines provide requisite know-how, but sustainability innovation requires the ability to bridge disciplines and to rise above the narrow bounds and myopia of specialized training in conventional economic models to envision new possibilities. Sustainability innovation occurs when entrepreneurs and ventures stretch toward a better future to offer distinctly new products, technologies, and ways of conducting business. The empirical evidence suggests that while entrepreneurs who succeed typically bring their uniquely specialized know-how to the table, they also have a systems view that welcomes and mixes diverse perspectives to create change.
Business has traveled a long distance from the adversarial pollution control days of the 1970s in the United States, when systemic ecological problems were first acknowledged. Companies were asked to bear the costs of environmental degradation yet often lacked the ability or know-how to realize any rewards for those investments. Decades ago, the goals were narrow: compliance and cost avoidance. Today the intersecting environmental, health, and social challenges are understood as more complex. Community prosperity requires a far broader view of economic development. It requires a sustainability mind-set. While the challenges are undeniably serious, as our examples will show, the entrepreneurial mind sees wide open opportunities.
A growing number of companies now recognize that improving performance and innovation across the full sustainability agenda—financial, ecological, environmental, and social health and prosperity—can grow revenues, improve profitability, and enhance their brands. Sustainability strategies and innovations also position businesses favorably in markets, as their slower-learning competitors fail to develop internal and supply-chain competencies to compete. We predict that within a relatively short period of time what is now considered sustainability innovation will become mainstream business operation.
World Resources Institute’s Corporate Ecosystem Services Review
www.wri.org/project/ecosystem-services-review
Sidestepping the need for sustainability may prove difficult. Population growth rates and related higher levels of waste guarantee environmental concerns will grow in importance. The government and the public are increasingly concerned with the extent and severity of air, water, and soil contamination and the implications of natural resource consumption and pollution for food production, drinking water availability, and public health. As environmental and social problems increase, public health concerns are likely to drive new approaches to pollution prevention and new regulations encompassing previously unregulated activities. As concerns increase, so will the market power of sustainable business. The opportunities are there for the entrepreneurially minded. Sustainability innovation offers solutions.
The entrepreneurial leaders forging ahead with sustainability innovation understand the value of partnerships with supply-chain vendors and customers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), public policy agencies, and academia in pursuing product designs and strategies. Many of their innovations are designed to avoid the need for regulation by steadily reducing adverse ecological and health impacts, with the goal of eliminating negative impacts altogether. Significantly, environmental and associated health, community, and equity issues are integrated into core business strategy and thus into the operations of the firm and its supply chains.
Start-up firms and small to midsized companies have always been major movers of entrepreneurial innovation and will continue to lead in sustainability innovation. However, even large firms can offer innovative examples. Indeed, Stuart Hart in his 2005 book Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems argues that multinational corporations have the capacity and qualities to address the complicated problems of resource constraints, poverty, and growth.Stuart L. Hart, Capitalism at the Crossroads (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2005). According to analysts of what is termed “bottom of the pyramid” markets where over two billion people live on one to two dollars a day, developing countries represent both a market for goods and the potential to introduce sustainable practices and products on a massive scale.
Sustainable Business: Opportunity and Value Creation
- Sustainable business strategies are ones that achieve economic performance through environmentally and socially aware design and operating practices that move us toward a cleaner, healthier, more equitable (and hence more stable) world.
- Sustainable business entrepreneurs understand that sustainability opportunities represent a frontier for creativity, innovation, and the creation of value.
By the first decade of the twenty-first century, a growing number of business executives believed that sustainability should play a role in their work. PricewaterhouseCoopers found that in 2003, 70 percent of CEOs surveyed believed that environmental sustainability was important to overall profit. By 2005, that number had climbed to 87 percent.Karen Krebsbach, “The Green Revolution: Are Banks Sacrificing Profits for Activists’ Principles?” US Banker, December 1, 2005, accessed March 27, 2009, www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-12108489_ITM. In a later PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of technology executives, 71 percent said they did not believe their company was particularly harmful to the environment, yet 61 percent said it was nonetheless important that they reduce their company’s environmental impact. The majority of executives also believed strong demand existed for “green” and cleaner products and that demand would only increase.PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Going Green: Sustainable Growth Strategies,” Technology Executive Connections 5 (February 2008), accessed March 27, 2009, www.pwc.com/images/techconnect/TEC5.pdf.
Such employers as well as employees have begun striving toward sustainability. Labor unions and environmentalists, once at odds, jointly created the Apollo Alliance to promote the transition to a clean energy environment under the slogan “Clean Energy, Good Jobs.” Van Jones, formerly with the Obama administration, led Green For All, an organization that proposed the new green economy tackle poverty and pollution at the same time through business collaboration in cities to provide clean energy jobs.
Video Clip
Van Jones on Green for All
(click to see video)
Meanwhile, numerous large and well-known companies, including DuPont, 3M, General Electric, Walmart, and FedEx, have taken steps to save money by using less energy and material or to increase market share by producing more environmental products. Walmart, for instance, stated that as of 2009 its “environmental goals are simple and straightforward: to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our natural resources and the environment.”Walmart, “Sustainability,” accessed March 27, 2009, http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability . But transitioning from a wasteful economic system to one that conserves energy and materials and dramatically reduces hazardous waste, ultimately reversing the ecological degradation and social inequity often associated with economic growth, takes a major shift in the collective state of mind.
Assumptions that Earth systems, regional and local ecological systems, and even the human body can be sustained and can regenerate in the face of negative impacts from energy and material consumption have proven wrong. Linear processes of extracting or synthetically producing raw materials, converting them into products, using those products, and throwing them away to landfills and incinerators increasingly are viewed as antiquated, old-world designs that must be replaced by systems thinking and life-cycle analysis. These new models will explicitly consider poverty alleviation, equity, health, ecological restoration, and smart energy and materials management as integrated considerations. The precise outline of the new approach remains ambiguous, but the direction and trajectory are clear. While government policies may contribute guidelines and requirements for a more sustainable economic infrastructure, the business community is the most powerful driver of rapid innovation and change. The entrepreneurs are leading the way.
In conclusion, economic development trajectories both in the United States and worldwide are now recognized as incompatible with ecological systems’ viability and long-term human health and social stability. Wetlands, coastal zones, are rain forests are deteriorating, while toxins and air and water pollution harm human health and drive political unrest and social instability; witness the growing numbers of environmental refugees. Even large Earth systems, such as the atmosphere and nitrogen and carbon cycles, are endangered. The business models we created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that succeeded in delivering prosperity to ever greater numbers of people did not anticipate the exponential population explosion, technological capability to extract and process ever-greater volumes of materials, natural resource demand, growing constraints on resources, political unrest, fuel cost volatility, and limits of ecological systems and human bodies to assimilate industrial waste.
Scholars and students of business will look back on the early decades of the twenty-first century as a transition as the human community responded to scientific feedback from natural systems and took to heart the desire to extend true prosperity to greater numbers by redesigning business. To the extent that this effort will be deemed successful, much of the credit will go to the entrepreneurial efforts to experiment with new ideas and to drive the desired change. No single venture or individual can address the wide range of sustainability concerns. It is the combination of large and small efforts across sectors and industries around the world that will create an alternative future. That is how change happens—and entrepreneurs are at the cutting edge.
Key Takeaways
- Sustainability innovation provides new ways to deliver goods and services that are explicitly designed to create a healthier, more equitable, and prosperous global community.
- The sustainability design criteria differ from conventional business approaches by their concurrent and integrated incorporation of economic performance goals, ecological system protection, human health promotion, and community vitality. A new model is emerging through the efforts of entrepreneurial leaders.
Exercises
- Identify an ecological, equity, health, or product safety problem you see that might be addressed through a sustainability innovation approach. What causes the problem? What kind of shift in mind-set may be required to generate possible solutions?


15.5: Seeking Help or Support
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Identify sources for assistance
- Explain the benefits provided through seeking assistance
- Compare tools to assist in deciding what advice to follow
You’ve learned about some of the challenges in starting the venture and the types of decisions that the entrepreneurial team must make, as well as the importance of recognizing when you don’t know something or that you have encountered a problem. Facing these issues is easier when you recognize that asking for help should be part of the process. Given the wide range of variables involved in starting a new venture, it’s just not possible for one entrepreneur to have all the answers. Asking for help is an intelligent decision: It’s an action that recognizes the complexity of starting and managing a venture.
Types of Assistance
Fortunately, there are many types of assistance available in the field of entrepreneurship starting with your own network of people. Additionally, there are local, regional, national, and even international groups available to help you navigate the entrepreneurial journey.
Ideally, the entrepreneurial team conducted due diligence in their quest for funding (see Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting ). For those entrepreneurs pursuing financing through angel investors, research on what angel investors contribute to the funded entrepreneur beyond the actual dollars invested highlights the importance of the angel investor’s expertise and knowledge as a contributor to the venture’s success. 10 While many entrepreneurs focus solely or primarily on receiving funding to start the venture, this study points to the importance in selecting an angel investor with knowledge of the industry, the distribution system, the technology, product, or the target market, as imperative to the success of the venture.
We’ve discussed the importance of finding an angel investor who has a background and experience in a similar area as your venture. Finding the right angel investor not only results in receiving the needed funding, but also access to this person’s knowledge and personal network. Ideally, the angel investor has knowledge related to your industry, your target market, and your supply chain or distribution channel. This background knowledge provides you with key resources that can give your venture expertise that contributes to the venture’s success. The angel investor’s network also provides opportunities to gain key insights, seek advice, and discuss ideas or solutions that benefit the venture as a network of well-informed and experienced people.
The other primary network is the entrepreneurial team’s network. These people include spouses/partners, family members, business associates, colleagues, and friends. These people can provide ideas and knowledge from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. Connecting and reaching out for help requires both the ability to build relationships and the ability to recognize that seeking help reflects maturity and wisdom. As you tap into your network and seek advice, consider each person from a long-term relationship-building perspective. Consider how you might return the favor at a future time, if asked to help, or provide your expertise back to the people you access for help.
As you work with your network, keep track of the person’s name, your conversation, and any commitments made during the meeting. A commitment might be a follow-up message on how you used the advice or response to the request, or an action that you will perform for someone else. Creating a formal network or contact system helps in developing this network into a long-term relationship-based perspective.
When seeking advice, be respectful of the other person’s time. This means identifying exactly what type of help you want to request from the person. Are you requesting an introduction to someone else within that person’s network, or advice about solving a problem, or access to physical resources? Setting up an appointment demonstrates respect, as does preparing for the meeting and explaining how you will use the advice. Remember to thank the person and follow up with feedback on what happened from using the advice.
The types of assistance that can be provided through networking include:
- advice or information
- access to other people’s networks
- access to financial resources
- business services such as legal, accounting, or administrative support
- physical resources such as land, buildings, or equipment.
Other free sources of support are instructors of your business courses, other business owners, organizations such as the SCORE (originally called the Service Corps of Retired Executives) and resources within the Small Business Administration (SBA). SCORE is an organization with a network of volunteers across the U.S. and is a resource partner with the SBA. SCORE offers mentor consultants, workshops, and other assistance to support the success of small businesses.
The SBA is a federally funded organization charged with assisting small businesses from startup through their continued existence. The SBA can help in reviewing and improving your business plan, providing assistance in finding funding through loans or grants, and acting as a consultant throughout the venture’s existence. The SBA provides help in complying with both state and federal regulations. Depending on your business model, you might need licenses or permits, and your local SBA office will be well informed on these topics and can help you acquire what is needed to support the success of your venture.
General Motors’ Failure to Consider Stakeholders
Watch this video explaining various services offered by the Small Business Administration to learn about resources to support your venture.
Most states provide start-up help to small businesses, which can be found by searching the internet for your state’s sponsored help in starting a business. In addition, there are often local meet-up groups and community-supported assistance to help you start your business. You might also find a virtual support group that provides advice from a diverse group of potential business owners.
A paid source of help—legal assistance—can save anguish, time, and money for the entrepreneurial team. In selecting an attorney, look for one with experience in entrepreneurial ventures similar to yours. Resources to help you find an attorney include checking with your network or angel investor for a recommendation or contacting the local branch of the American Bar Association. Most states have an online directory of local member attorneys that you can use to search for a lawyer who fits your venture’s needs. Once you have identified an attorney, research the best method for payment of these services. Some possibilities include a monthly retainer fee, payment for specific services, or payment on an hourly basis for work performed.
Other paid-for services include accounting, tax reporting, and human resource management areas. Opening and managing a business takes time, and assigning a professional accountant the responsibility of preparing monthly financial statements and tax reports can provide you with expert support as well as provide you with time necessary to position your venture into a successful growing business, as does outsourcing personnel tasks such as processing payroll. These supporting companies can be either virtual companies, or a local business, depending on your needs. Especially for payroll and other human resource activities, virtual companies specialize in meeting the administrative needs in a fast and efficient manner. Oftentimes outsourcing administrative areas is a more accurate and cost-effective than completing these tasks within the venture. Although these services cost money, these activities performed require knowledge of laws and regulations that many business owners are not equipped to be experts in, nor can they reasonably stay on top of frequent changes in these matters. This can result in legal problems, as federal and state laws and regulations must be followed.
Support System Development
You learned about a variety of support systems in Building Networks and Foundations . Some entrepreneurs may seek to work with a local incubator service. These incubator community groups provide a physical location to offer working space as well as the opportunity for interactions with other new startup owners and teams. The opportunity to be in a shared space with other inspired entrepreneurs can create excitement, sharing of ideas, and opportunities to talk through challenges. Potentially, there could be synergies between your venture and another venture realized through these discussions.
Companies like Y Combinator in Silicon Valley and Techstars in Boulder, Colorado, provide unique assistance to new startup ventures ( Figure 15.8 ). These types of organizations are considered accelerator entities intended to fast track a select number of new ventures through information sharing, seed funding with a small equity stake in the funded venture, mentoring, and offering formal angel investor “pitch” events. The selection process makes being accepted into these organizations difficult. However, once accepted, your venture becomes more credible for having been accepted, as well as for the wealth of connections and information that will be received throughout the experience.
Although each incubation program offers different—and sometimes uniquely specialized—help, they can be generally categorized by the types of support potentially available through these programs. Some incubators focus on one segment of an industry, or one segment of talent or interest. For example, there might be an incubator intended only for marketing start-ups. In this example, the incubator might assist with providing support in various marketing areas such as digital marketing, business-to-business marketing, global marketing, sports marketing, video creation, or other areas that fit within the topic of marketing. Oftentimes, incubators are sponsored by a municipality or government source.
Incubators are unique to a community’s interests and available resources. Some communities have a vision for the community and desire the growth of the community to align with this vision. If a community has this perspective, their incubators would also align with this vision. Other communities create incubators around available resources, such as access and support from specific groups. Figure 15.9 illustrates the wide variety of approaches used in creating incubators. An incubator is supported by perhaps one or two of these sources, depending on the goal of the incubator.
As you build your support group, you might want to create an advisory group, which is a formal group of people who provide you with advice. In building your advisory group, select people who demonstrate an interest in your venture and your startup team.  You also want a diverse group of people who can provide insights that reflect different backgrounds and knowledge. This diversity of experience and knowledge provides you with the greatest breadth of advice, which leads to your difficult decision: what advice to follow.
Deciding What Advice to Follow
Once you have advice from a variety of sources, how do you decide which recommendations to pursue, which to consider, and which to rule out? One approach is to identify what information is qualitative versus quantitative, and evaluate one type first. Qualitative information is conceptual—about ideas—whereas quantitative information is statistical or numerical. In both qualitative and quantitative areas, the entrepreneur can create visualizations to clarify the information and support analysis and decision making. The brainstorming and mindmaps discussed earlier, and illustrated in Figure 15.10 , highlight the different types of data you can work with.
Two other tools for sorting through advice are the Delphi method and the Nominal Group technique. Both provide a structured methodology that can be applied to evaluate ideas. In the Delphi method , broad open-ended questions related to the decision being addressed are put into a questionnaire sent out to participants. For example, you might solicit input from your advisory group or another group closely connected to the topic. As responses come in, the questions are updated to align better with the first set of responses. The process repeats until there is a clear understanding of the participants’ responses. Next, you create a list of possible options and request each participant to rank the options. Depending on these results, you either fine tune the list by dropping off low-ranked items, or, if the results are satisfactory, the options are narrowed to two or three top choices.
The Nominal Group technique occurs in a group setting. Participants are presented with a question or topic and write their thoughts in response on a card. The participants do not share their comments. Once everyone has submitted the cards, the facilitator shares all feedback so that everyone can see all participants’ input. The participants discuss all of the ideas. Next, the participants again write down their responses on a new set of cards. The comments are again recorded and shared so that everyone can see the results. The process continues until there is agreement on a final filtered, or narrowed, list or set of options. At this point, the participants vote or rank the remaining set of options with the goal of accepting one option.
Although these techniques and tools take time, the process of thinking through each decision and possible action helps your mind pause to reflect and to be alerted to the importance of the decision. Taking a break at this point allows you to process the information, perhaps while taking a walk or having a lunch break. At some point, you might suddenly have a feeling of knowing the right answer— the decision to make. Sometimes, this experience is attributed to a “gut” feeling or intuition that tells you what you need to do. Resources like Gary Klein’s The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work explains how this process works in the human brain. Sometimes, this moment of recognition of the chosen decision results in a decision that wasn’t produced through our processes but that offers a new and creative solution.
Taking the time to evaluate and deeply think about the problem, the advice, and possible solutions is an important part of decision making. Just as important are pausing and taking time to select a decision that is not reactive and that you feel comfortable with, keeping in mind that the decision you make might be unique, and the actual decision might not be within the advice provided to you by your support group. As the lead entrepreneur whose goal is the success of the venture, you are ultimately responsible for the decision. If the advice provided doesn’t feel right, make the decision that does feel right and make sure you communicate that decision with your team.