THE AGILE ENTREPRENEUR – 5
Agile entrepreneurs know how to tinker under pressure . . . without feeling that pressure as an inhibiting force. There is something rather bold and defiant about someone facing a deadline or a seemingly insoluble [...]
July 2009
THE AGILE ENTREPRENEUR – 4
The leader's inspiration is often the high-octane fuel that drives an entrepreneurial organization. Any organization today wants to confirm its instincts with validating quantitative and qualitative information. While understandable, that reassurance can prove costly. Information [...]
THE AGILE ENTREPRENEUR – 3
Nearly all budding entrepreneurs believe they are well suited to entrepreneurship because they are self-reliant and are accomplished chiefly because they get things done themselves. Almost all seasoned entrepreneurs have learned just the opposite is [...]
THE AGILE ENTREPRENEUR – 2
The world of McKinsey, Boston Consulting, and Bain dominate traditional consulting. Their strengths, in my view, are most deeply developed in cost-cutting and in trimming out the wasted white spaces of organization. Smaller, less process-driven [...]
THE AGILE ENTREPRENEUR – 1
Entrepreneurs are imaginative, expansive, and inspiring dynamos. But, in a drastically down economy, when payrolls must be met, credit has dried up, and suppliers retreat to tight-fisted terms, entrepreneurs are also something else . . [...]
June 2009
SIX INGREDIENTS OF VALUABLE BRANDING
CULTURE: Brands flourish in open cultures run by candid managers. A brand's success reflects transparency. Our fast-moving world demands that a brand be intelligible intuitively even when it isn't grasped easily on an analytical level. [...]
May 2009
FORMULATING AUTHENTIC NEW BRAND CONCEPTS
A Self-Audit to Spur the Process ▪ What have been the most important brand milestones in your industry in the last 2 to 3 decades? Why exactly were they significant? What assumptions did they challenge? [...]
INNOVATION: A TOUGH SHELL TO CRACK
Earlier this month, Donna Howell wrote a piece on J. M. Lapeyre for Investor's Business Daily. Lapeyre, who died in 1989, noticed something while he was still in high school in the 1940s. It was [...]
April 2009
LISTS CAN CRIPPLE
We no longer think in a linear fashion, if indeed we ever did think that way. You can't spearhead innovation by marching down a checklist. The mind functions differently, and you'll achieve much more by [...]
March 2009
SURVIVAL WITH STYLE: PLAUSIBLE OR PIPE DREAM?
When any upheaval happens, human nature – and most of the media – err on the side of extreme reactions. On February 21, the Bloomberg financial website presented an astute analysis: “Even in the midst [...]