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 Version Française | Last updated May 12th 2004 |
What is ENTERWeb?
ENTERWeb is an annotated meta-index and information clearinghouse on enterprise development, business, finance, international trade and the economy in this new age of cyberspace and globalization.The main focus is on micro, small and medium scale enterprises, cooperatives, community economic development, both in developed and developing countries. ENTERWeb lists and rates Internet resources in these areas, and complements search engines by providing shortcuts in identifying important sources of information.In other words, ENTERWeb acts as a single dispatching window of information which will direct anyone looking for information related to enterprise development, business and international trade to the best places on the web most likely to respond to their needs.
Why ENTERWeb?
The answer is simple: with more than 200 million of Internet users and several million of websites, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find quickly important and relevant information. Try making a search with any of the major search engines, using keywords related to enterprise development such as entrepreneurship or international trade. You are likely to get in excess of 175,000 sites identified. Are you going to look at everyone of them? obviously not. In fact surveys show that most people rarely go beyond the 20 site mark.Try an other test. Look at the best 10 sites listed in each of the various ENTERWeb categories. Do they appear when you do a search ? certainly not all of of them, if you are lucky one or two,. There you have the answer: ENTERWeb is a product which has been developed to provide value added to searching of quality information.
Who owns ENTERWeb?
 | ENTERWeb is a personal, private website singlehandedly owned, designed, funded, operated and maintained by Jean-Claude Lorin who is also the owner of ENTER-L a discussion group on enterprise development in developed and developing countries | |
| ENTERWeb is developed outside of normal working hours, mostly during the evenings and weekends, and all related costs are paid by the owner. There is no relationship between the development of ENTERWeb and CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, nor is there any use of internal information pertaining to CIDA development projects or programs. ENTERWeb has been registered as a trademark under Canadian law. | |
Mission and Objectives
The primary objective of ENTERWeb is to act as an information broker which will provide to enterprise development practitioners, policy makers, academics and small business owners an annotated list of Internet resources giving substantive information on enterprise development topics including finance and credit, technology and technology transfer, management training, business centers and advisory services, entrepreneurship development and incubators, community economic development, credit unions and cooperatives, education and vocational training, marketing and trade, business networks and information resources, business law and cyberbusiness, enterprise development policies, economics, enterprise and environment, business news, women and enterprises, etc.The objective is for each individual topic to identify what are the best sites on the web with regards to that particular topic and to give enough general information on each site so that one would know whether or not they should visit it
In addition, ENTERWeb aims to provide business related information and links on a country by country basis, mostly for developing countries and emerging markets.
How to use ENTERWeb?
There are several ways to find information using ENTERWeb. Going to the main menu and identifying the topic of interest is the most efficient route but you can also go to the geographical areas or to the main index of sites. For regular users (do not forget to bookmark ENTERWeb) the best way is to go to the What's New section
The following might help you with the various topics
- Entrepreneurship
sites relating to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship development, enterprise creation, young entrepreneurs, startup education, training for young entrepreneurs
- Finance
sites relating to finance and banking, investors, investments, stock markets, foreign investments, capital market. In other words everything related to broad financial matters.
- Management
sites relating to management, management development, management issues, standards.
- Technology
sites relating to technology transfer, appropriate technology, technology institutes, technology development
- Marketing & Trade
sites relating to foreign trade, markets, exports, trade information systems, trade laws, international trade, globalization, trade agreements. All sites related to the UN system and international trade would be in that section.
- Business networks & information resources
sites relating to business networks and networking but also all sites acting as business information resources, information clearinghouses, business libraries, Internet resources catalogues, meta-indexes. Sites having a similar or related objective to ENTERWeb would be in that section
- Business centers and advisory services
sites relating to provision of advisory services to small business, business information useful to SMEs, Internet resources for enterprises, business service centers, magazines providing solutions to small business. This is the place where you would find information on how to start, manage and operate a business.
- Education & training
sites relating to business training, vocational training, enterprise education, training resources, business schools.
- Policy
sites relating to policies for enterprise development, think tanks, public policies, policy research, international studies. This where you would find the World Bank and other donors policies for private sector development.
- Business law
sites relating to business and trade laws, copyright, trademark, intellectual property, law resources.
- Enterprise and environment
sites relating to the interface between the enterprise and the environment, environmental technology, business and environment, environmental law, standards, waste prevention, industrial pollution.
- Economics
sites relating to Internet resources in Economics, economics institutes, sources of information related to the various facets of Economics, economics research.
- Incubators
sites relating to business incubators and employment creation, self-employment initiatives.
- Business news
sites relating to sources of business news.
- Cyberbusiness
sites relating to cyberbusiness, electronic commerce, setting up a business on the web.
- Women and enterprises
sites relating to women entrepreneurs, women in business, resources for businesswomen, women and technology, etc.
- Community economic development
sites relating to community economic development, local development, social economy, employment creation, etc.
- Credit unions and cooperatives
sites relating to the cooperative movement, cooperative associations, etc.
- Microcredit
sites relating to microcredit and microfinance, microenterprises, informal finance.
- International business research
sites relating to research in social, economic and technological development as well as research in business matters.
- Bibliography & documents
sites relating to publications in the field of enterprise development.
- Conferences &seminars
sites relating to special events, conferences, seminars.
- Discussion groups
lists and give information on discussion group related to the subject.
- Donor activities
sites providing information on donor agencies activities in the area of enterprise development.
A little bit of history
Like I guess a lot of people, I had my first taste of the Internet back in the fall of 1994 when Netscape 1.0 was released in beta form. Very quickly my interest turned to discussion groups which I saw as having tremendous potential in terms of networking and information sharing and in mid 1995 I launched ENTER-L a discussion group on enterprise development in developing countries (ENTER for ENTERprise) which generated immediate interest with membership quickly growing to over 400 professionals all over the world.
At the same time, I had been slowly collecting bookmarks related to the issue of enterprise development, and thinking about setting up a presence on the web. With the explosion of the number of websites and the difficulty of getting the right information with search engines because of the sheer number of responses they would provide, I felt that there was a need for information clearinghouses which would complement search engines and provide a shortcut to key information sources.
After carefully thinking about the structure of the website (based on the core functions of an enterprise), finding a name (ENTERWeb was a natural choice after ENTER-L) I decided to take the most difficult step: learn the basics of HTML programming. After a lot of hard work and late nights and some welcomed outside help for the letters of the ENTERWeb logo (Thanks to Hugo Dominguez) I was able to officially open ENTERWeb on January 15th 1996 as a bilingual (French/English) website on enterprise development in developed and developing countries.
It has since continued to expand and to grow, with geographical sections being created, new topics identified and 600 new sites being added since February 1997 (for a total of over 800 sites). In July 1997, I registered ENTERWeb as a domain name and moved it to a server in Nova Scotia, Canada. Shortly thereafter I moved ENTER-L to the same server.
For those interested, it takes me an average of four to five hours for each new site added to ENTERWeb (including the identification and perusal of potential sites)... and all of this is being done during my personal free time and outside of normal working hours ! Sponsors are welcome !!
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Please send electronic mail to jlorin@synapse.net or enterweb@enterweb.org to comment and/or recommend new entries to this page.
©1996 - 2000 ENTERWeb The Enterprise Development Website.