Samuel Colt was a great inventor and marketer. He never gave up on his idea even in the face of adversity. Business can learn a lot from him
Business Lessons From Samuel Colt, American Inventor Read More »
Ignore the status quo and don’t build a better mousetrap. Stop focusing on what your competitors do. Instead, challenge orthodoxies. To do so, start with any of the nine business model building blocks and build outwards. While we typically start with customer segments to build a customer-driven business model, there are four common starting points.
Inside Out Business Model Read More »
When considering your unique value proposition, I find it helpful to consider a list of common value propositions to help guide me and my client’s thinking. To that end, here are eleven common value propositions that businesses might offer to their selected customer segment. Review the following value proposition types and determine which one is
Choosing a Value Proposition Type Read More »
Disruptive innovation is not about the next new product as much as it is about transforming an existing market from being expensive and complex to affordable and accessible. A disruptive innovation is more about targeting a high profit/low margin business and creating a high volume/low margin alternative. For example, it is very expensive to take
What Is Disruptive Innovation? Read More »
Some would say that Google has a monopoly on the search engine market with over 2/3 of all search traffic. Microsoft’s Bing is a distant number two with less than 1/5 of the search engine market. Is Google a monopoly that needs to be busted up like AT&T or Standard Oil for the good of
Monopoly Is a Matter of Perspective Read More »
More and more products can be produced and assembled by robotic assembly lines. Even services, such as those offered by CPAs and stock brokers, can now be performed by software tools or applications such as TurboTax or e-Trade. Recently, I read an article that said that with the threat of a monumental rise in the
The Robot/Application Arbitrage Read More »
The federal government killed the Industrial Revolution by squelching successful entrepreneurs such as JP Morgan, JD Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie and spinning a story for its own political gain
How to Stop the American Industrial Revolution Read More »
Climate change has been blamed on our overuse of fossil fuels and pegged as the leading cause of the inevitable doom of our species. However, climate change in the form of ice ages and droughts has occurred many times during the period of mankind. Climate change has even led to some of our most important
Climate Change Spurs Innovation Read More »
The other day I was asked if a person’s idea would make a good business. Unfortunately, I had to tell them that it would not be a good idea for them to pursue. While the idea might have been a novel and been a successful venture in the right hands, they didn’t have access to
Your Best Chance to Succeed in Small Business Read More »
Sometimes managers get too comfortable with their jobs and build internal walls to control knowledge in the hopes of making them indispensable to the company. The result is the company begins to stagnate. To combat this thinking and spur innovation, Jorma Ollila, CEO of Nokia, implemented a job swap program. Nokia adopted an everyone-out-of-your-comfort-zone management
Never Get Too Comfortable Read More »
