Jeffrey Robinson

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TRENTON - State business leaders are facing a stark and chilling reality: Hundreds of companies remain perilously close to losing their battle against Hurricane Sandy’s devastation.

This is a critical point in officials’ efforts to resuscitate ailing businesses in the Garden State. They have to rapidly turn the rounded numbers and estimates from the early days of the hurricane’s aftermath into hard figures that will help them cut a clear path to recovery.

Jeffrey Robinson, assistant professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark, has studied data collected from companies after other U.S. disasters.

In academic terms, Robinson said, New Jersey’s survey would need to generate at least 4,000 responses before it could claim represent a signficant cross-section of the estimated 40,000 businesses impacted by the storm.

"The only way to get that is by going door to door, getting people to go out and collect this information," he said. "Anyone can go online to fill out that form right now, for better or for worse."

It's a nice premise: Buy stuff to help those in need. Companies using this model are profiting off people wanting to "do good." Is there anything wrong with that?

Watch Professor Jeffrey Robinson discuss this with the Huffington Post.

Entrepreneurs hoping to make the world a better place will get a helping hand next year from the New Jersey Social Innovation Institute, a new program offered through a partnership between Rutgers University and PSEG, the parent company of Public Service Electric & Gas.

Both individuals and organizations will participate, and there are 16 slots for the program, which is open to entrepreneurs focused on either a social or environmental good.

"The big idea is, how do you encourage non-profit organizations and innovative individuals who want to solve problems and create jobs at the same time," explained Professor Jeff Robinson of the Rutgers Business School. "It’s not an easy task to pull off."

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Interview with Jeff Robinson found here.

The new book, Black Faces In White Places: 10 Game-Changing Strategies to Achieve Success and Find Greatness, written by former Rhodes Scholar and winner of season four of NBC's The Apprentice Randal Pinkett, Ph.D. and business scholar Jeffrey Robinson, Ph.D., makes the compelling case that, until recently, African Americans focused primarily on strategies and skills necessary to get into professions, businesses and institutions previously closed to them -- to break the color barrier, to shatter the infamous "glass ceiling."

When Randal Pinkett and Jeffrey Robinson attended Rutgers University together in the early '90s, the glass ceiling of the corporate business world seemed impenetrable to many African Americans. Five degrees each and several successes later, the enterprising pair has penned "Black Faces in White Places: 10 Game-Changing Strategies to Achieve Success and Find Greatness" a detailed account of how they and other blacks have smashed that ceiling to win what the authors now call "the ever-changing game."