Most likely you saw the news that the venerable company, Sears filed for bankruptcy in October. What can we learn from its demise? Sears, which eventually changed its name to Sears & Roebuck started in 1886 in Minneapolis, Mn. and moved to Chicago in 1887, was one of the most innovative companies of its time. […]
Archive for the ‘Small Business Planning’ Category
09/30/2018
September 2018 – With Innovation, You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
As it turns out with innovation you can teach an old dog new tricks, and Microsoft Word is a great example. Word processing software, which was first developed by IBM has been around since the early 1970’s, so you would think that everything that could have been added to it in the past 45 years would […]
08/31/2018
August 2018 – How to Find and Develop Innovative Ideas Like Google Does
Last year Google completed the first entire restructuring of their corporate organization since it started. This reorganization included creating a parent company, Alphabet, Inc. and then moving various units that were formerly part of Google to separate entities. Part of this effort included repositioning their research and development arm, into a company called Google X. […]
03/31/2018
March 2018 – Innovation Does Not Just Happen, It Must Be Led from the Top
You may have seen the surprise announcement on March 15, 2018 by Dietmar Exler, CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA that the German automaker will open a global innovation lab in metro Atlanta to dream up new products and businesses. The stated objective of the lab is to fast track projects and services from design to market. […]
02/28/2018
February 2018 – Using Innovation to Transform Your Company
It is surprising how innovation is impacting our lives every day, and the pace of innovation is increasing. Many of these innovations have the potential to truly change our lives. For instance, researchers are now working on developing materials that actually can mask themselves from light so that the objects become invisible. The fanciful “cloak […]
01/31/2018
January 2018 – Innovation: The Yin and Yang of the 21st Century
Over the past 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in the topic of innovation, and virtually every business, organization, and country espouses the virtues of innovation. This is reflected in a recent survey published in The Business Journals which showed that the second biggest challenge facing companies was Increasing Profit. It reported 45% […]
12/31/2017
December 2017 – Creating the Organization to Achieve Your 1, 3 and 5 Year Company Goals
At the beginning of the year, like many other businesses and organizations leaders you may find yourself working on the plans for your company’s future operations. One of biggest challenges with this task is how to translate Strategic Plans into the detailed and tactical steps that are necessary to achieve the goals in your Strategic […]
11/30/2017
November 2017 – How to Effectively Manage Your Key Personnel
Last week a client that has about 250 employees was in my office and during the meeting we discussed how the year 2017 had been for him businesswise. As we looked at their Financial Statements they showed their company had a very successful year, in fact their best year ever. But as we chatted I […]
10/31/2017
October 2017 – Do This One Thing and the Dreams for your Business Will Come True
At a meeting last week, I was talking with a person who told me about some large challenges they were wrestling with in deciding where they wanted to take their company. As they shared the pros and cons of their various options, first from one angle, then from another perspective, I realized that this person […]
09/30/2017
September 2017 – Why So Many Companies’ Strategy Fail
I recently was reviewing two studies, one by McKinsey & Co. and the other by Harvard Business School that found 90% of organization’s strategies that fail do so because of lack of execution. What they discovered is that most of companies they examined had a practical and achievable strategy for their business, they just did […]
