A recent study shows that a lot of bosses aren’t doing a very good job of listening to their employees. In these difficult economic times your small business might not be able to hand out cash bonuses or pay increases, but you can pay more attention to what your employees are saying. It’s bound to be good for businesses.

Survey Results: The more powerful you are, the more difficult it may be to listen to your employees. That’s the conclusion from research conducted by Kelly See, an assistant professor of management and organization at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, along with colleagues from Lehigh and Duke Universities. More than 200 business graduate students were asked to remember scenarios where they felt helpless or where they had power over people and resources. People who recalled times when they felt powerful were less likely to listen to advice. See says, “It’s important to surround yourself with people who are going to disagree with you and to remind you that you’re not always right. Leaders should seek as many opinions as they can get, and they should force themselves to listen to those opinions.” To read more, check out the November issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Benefits of Listening to Employees: In a knowledge-based workplace, you want to take advantage of the experience and insights of the people on your payroll. If employees feel valued, they’re likely to be more satisfied and productive. Employee feedback may also help you to avoid costly mistakes.

Strategies for Getting and Implementing Employee Feedback:

Adjust Your Mindset. Once you recognize the bias that feelings of power can create, you can try to compensate for the effect. It’s good to feel confident but you don’t want to alienate people and disregard valuable input.

Take a Survey. Ask your employees what matters to them. These days, flexible hours and educational opportunities may help to make pay freezes and smaller work forces more tolerable.

Engage Everyone in Brainstorming. Encourage employees at all levels to contribute ideas on how to cut costs, get more customers, improve working conditions and drive growth. Schedule retreats or set aside time in staff meetings. Create an online suggestion box.
Let Employees Know How Their Feedback is Being Used. Employees will feel more motivated if they know their efforts produce results. When you make an organizational change, explain how employee input factored into the decision.

Show your employees you care this holiday season and throughout the year. With everyone trying to do more with less, listening to your employees will empower them to contribute more to the bottom line while boosting everyone’s morale.

Ideas are great but they have to be marketable if you want to make a living off of them. If you’re a small business owner who wants to expand your products and services or you’re looking to start a new small business you can avoid some expensive mistakes through the power of crowdsourcing. These are three sites where entrepreneurs can get feedback and assistance for $10 or less.

Quirky (http://www.quirky.com/): Quirky is a social product development company. For just $10 you can submit an idea that will immediately go live on the site, which has over 100,000 members. Your idea stays posted for 30 days while people vote and give you feedback. Meanwhile, Quirky staff monitor the most popular ideas and choose two each week for potential development. If your idea gets chosen you earn a “perpetual royalty.” If not, you still get great analytics. Quirky’s track record is very impressive. Since 2009, they’ve helped to develop over 200 products and their retail partners include Bed, Bath & Beyond, Office Max, Toys “R” Us and Barnes & Noble. Their most successful product, Pivot Power, has earned its inventor over $100,000. It’s a rotating power strip that accommodates the bulky power bricks at the end of the plugs for many devices.

GeniusCrowds (http://www.geniuscrowds.com/ ): GeniusCrowds is a community for creating products people want to see in stores. You can submit product ideas for free. The community reviews all the ideas and votes for their favorites. Then, expert panels including GeniusCrowds staff, retailers and manufacturers conduct their own review and select contenders. If your idea gets deemed one of their “genius products,” they build it and you earn royalties. Their Exclusive Product Development Agreement states that you’ll be paid a direct 25%s share of royalties. Even if you don’t get that far, you can earn gift cards just for being a crowd favorite.

Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/): Kickstarter is a funding platform for inventors, artists and other creative types. The emphasis is on creative projects and no money changes hands until a project is fully funded. The most common projects are $5,000 or less so people use it to test concepts or conditionally sell stuff without risk. It’s free to use. You submit a project and within about two days you get a response from a team member to let you know if it meets the guidelines. The key to success is to offer products, benefits and experiences that will motivate people to fund your idea.

Maybe you’ll become the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or maybe you’ll design a new product that becomes your next best seller. Either way, crowdsourcing provides valuable feedback at little cost.

The Startup America Partnership has promised over $1 billion in special services to 100,000 startup companies over the next three years. The private sector group held its first board meeting at the White House last week. These are some of the major highlights that emerged.

Background on Startup America: The partnership was launched at the White House as part an initiative to celebrate entrepreneurship. Under the chairmanship of AOL co-founder Steve Case, the alliance brings together major corporations, funders, service providers, mentors and advisors. The Kauffman and Case Foundations are founding partners, and American Express OPEN, Dell Inc., Intuit Inc. and Microsoft are sponsors. Fifty private sector partners have committed over $1.2 billion in resources to date. Almost 2,000 startup companies have already registered since the release of its platform in September 2011. Corporate commitments support the growth of startups in five key areas: expertise, services, talent, customers and capital.

Sample Expertise Offerings: The Consumer Electronics Association will welcome qualified Startup America entrepreneurs to the 2012 International CES, the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow on January 10 through January 13 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cooley LLP, a full-service global law firm, will offer 5 firms each month a special flat fee package including business formation, intellectual property and funding advice.

Sample Services Offerings: Turnstone, a Steelcase brand, is offering qualified firms free space plan consulting and 18 percent off their products for an estimated value of over $1 million. Qualifying firms can also get special prices and packages from NetSuite and Palo Alto Software, Accrisoft content management solutions, Bigstock and Shutterstock photos, and Legalzoom document services and legal plans.

Sample Talent Offerings: LinkedIn is donating up to 100,000 free subscriptions valued at $12 million. Other companies offering various benefits including free listings and credits include Top Prospect, Elance, IQ Talent Partners, The Resumator and ThinkHR.

Sample Customers Offerings: Emma, a web-based communications service for small businesses, is offering $86 million in free services including complimentary 6 month subscriptions and 20% lifetime discounts. All Startup America firms will also get a $100 credit at Eventbrite.

Sample Capital Offerings: Lendio, an online loan platform, has donated about $54 million to cover free premium memberships and other discounts. All eligible Startup America firms can also get 10% discounts on Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp. subscriptions.

Scott Case, CEO of the Startup America Partnership, says, “Every startup in the country should register now to utilize these resources and jumpstart their growth.” Each Startup America Firm gets a personalized dashboard “Growth Kit” so they can select the most relevant offerings and interact online. Visit www.startupamericapartnership.org or follow at www.twitter.com/startupamerica and www.facebook.com/startupamerica.