by Steve Livingston on November 19, 2010
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The following are links worthy of your attention in running your small-medium sized business:
Interview with Jason Fried of 37 Signals (video) – fascinating insights into productive work, generating ideas and products, improving communication – overall, tips in relation to the effective modern workplace. Great quote about entrepreneurialism and the danger of getting VC funding too early:
“The things you do more often are the things you get good at – so if early on you concentrate on spending money then you’ll get really good at spending money. If you have to concentrate on making money from day one then you get really good at making money – that’s what you have to be as an entrepreneur”
The Fear is Real – Six Pixels of Separation – Mitch Joel encourages businesses to engage in building their communities online via social media ready for when they might need their tribe to support them if the brand comes under attack. The problem is that there is a fear of getting on board – is it really that scary?
Nic Brisbourne at The Equity Kicker covers some great ideas espoused by Astro Teller on innovation including:
“When someone comes with an idea for a project, insist that they also show you nine other ideas they had and discarded. Partly this is because people shouldn’t just be coming with the first idea they think of, but also because forcing people with one good idea to go through a ‘I’d better think up nine other dumb ideas for my boss’ process, will generate a lot of creativity. One of the ‘dumb’ ideas might turn out to be the best one”
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing sets out an automated lead generation marketing system – simple when you know how.
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by Steve Livingston on November 3, 2010
Can you imagine a business that can reach sales of $9bn per year without having to purchase, store or make any products? This is the question posed by Phil Jones in a recent post on the success of ebay. In our ever flattening world, specialist supply chain experts will continue to be a growth area for businesses new and old.
Take Li & Fung as an example of old businesses that has achieved huge success in optimising global distribution networks. Founded in 1906, Li & Fung has diversified into product design, raw material sourcing, quality assurance, manufacturing and distribution and has grown to 15,000 employees worldwide and its annual sales revenues now tops $12bn – yet it doesn’t own a single manufacturing nor storage facility. It optimises price, quality and speed to market by applying the company’s management expertise and specialist knowledge to manage third party outsourced producers and facilities. This is a virtual business built for the 21st century. (If you’re interested in learning more about Li & Fung, I highly recommend reading Competing in a Flat World
).
Closer to home (and as an example of a new company in this space), I recently met up with the owners of a Manchester based company that had started a supply chain management business in the electrical and white goods market and had managed to built sales to £12m in their first year of trading and should top £25m turnover in year 2! This is phenomenal growth yet they operate with a team of just 10 staff, a handful of desks, chairs, laptops (plus bags of ambition and enthusiasm).
This all ties up with comments made by Julie Meyer at a recent BVCA Digital Age event about the emergence of ecosystem economics (Jyoti Banerjee of KiteBlue provides a nice summary of this concept here) and how the game changers of the next decade will be those entrepreneurs and businesses that can organise the global systems and technologies to optimum effect.
To effectively harness ecosystem economics and build successful businesses you can be big or small – the playing field’s probably never been more level.
