Archive for October, 2009
What exactly is your strategic vision?
This may sound like some big words and very sophisticated and the likes but we all do have a strategic vision. Whether we planned this out or not, that is the case.
To put my view on this in simple terms, whatever you are focused on, forms the core of your strategic vision. This means that if you are stuck in life and unhappy about your career, it means the strategic vision that you have now is leading you to that point.
On the flip side, when you have a specific plan to achieve some goals, then either you were wrong to set those goals in the first place and thats making you happy or you really are focused on the long term achievement and taking all the steps to doing so. Of course it will not be smooth sailing all the time but there is a difference to having setbacks and just stuck without real direction.
Take an audit of your actions and see if its getting you anywhere and that would be a good start to moving where you want to go.
What I find is that if you are really convicted about something, you will not just achieve it, you will get this done much faster depending on the energy you focus on it.
Learning from success, mistakes of big business – TheChronicleHerald.ca
IT IS possible for small business to learn from big companies. While many owners of small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, often take an “us versus them” attitude towards their larger business counterparts, there are some basic marketing principles that apply equally well to both big and small operations.
A critical part of any marketing strategy is the choice of target market that a firm takes on, with its relative offerings of product and service.
And it is possible to consider the actions of two Canadian business giants, Nortel Networks and RIM, in that discussion.
The Council of Canadian Academies released a report on innovation and business strategy in June. The report is a detailed analysis of how Canadian businesses rate in innovation and research and development internationally.
The report also features a very interesting discussion of the marketing actions of Nortel and RIM, how the two firms differed from their roots through to their strategic decisions, and how marketing strategy impacted the outcomes of their strategic decisions.
A basic part of Marketing 101 is determining how to choose a target market and how to fulfil its needs.
In many high-tech firms, companies use a more product-oriented approach than a market-oriented one, focusing first on their product and second on market needs.
It is hard to tell which came first with Nortel Networks, which had its roots in traditional markets providing telecommunications equipment.
This type of market approach in the information technology market (referred to as legacy equipment providers in the report) grew out of past markets and past market needs. To a great extent, traditional telecom needs are being met by the next generation of wireless technologies, resulting in a mix of old and new for firms such as Nortel.
The notion of old and new markets is an odd one that is based not on how long the market has existed but rather on whether or not the same market need is being served by new technologies or applications.
It is possible to use the analogy of the automobile industry, moving from horse and buggy to motorized vehicles. Both are transportation methods, but one is obsolete.
From a marketing perspective, the market for horse buggies has declined out of existence despite the fact that we have even more of a need for transportation (more people going longer distances) than we had back in horse and buggy days.
In other words, the need persists but how we fill the need as consumers or businesses evolves with changes in technology and lifestyle.
Nortel Networks, which has recently become one of Canada’s biggest corporate failures despite is premiere position in previous years in the IT industry, was heavily invested in providing equipment to corporate clients.
It carried a portfolio of products that were well regarded but slowly becoming obsolete.
Price drops as products become less popular, a process that has been forced into hyperdrive by offshore competitors whose cost structures are lower than ours.
The end result was a nasty fall from grace as Nortel struggled to reposition itself in more innovative markets.
RIM was born to be a research-oriented firm, grown with venture capital. This reality would create a fundamentally more nimble company with a much more research-oriented culture.
RIM caters to similar markets, but with new technological applications that are not yet mature.
However, RIM does have one critical flaw: it is mainly a one-product firm. The BlackBerry is what has propelled RIM into stratospheric profit levels and it continues to give RIM a strategic competitive advantage despite a growing number of competitors.
RIM is working the product life cycle in a very innovative and competitive way.
However, it will have to follow the BlackBerry with even greater innovations to keep its pre-eminent market position.
This requires continuous research and development, with more patent filings and a relentless search for the next big thing to fill the market need.
Which company was more competitive? Nortel was in its day, and RIM is today.
And that difference is part of the reason why RIM continues to succeed in the wake of Nortel’s fall from grace.
Karen Blotnicky is president of TMC The Marketing Clinic and a professor at Mount Saint Vincent University.
This is a great article to review and learn the ropes of building a world class business. More to come.
Quick Business Update – October
I have been on vacation for the last week and ending this coming week-end. Just wanted to share my latest updates on my business quest. One of the things I have been focused on, is the issue of obtaining reasonable business financing to take the next step. While I have learnt some good ideas during this process, it seems the market is really tight out there and show why the economy is still in some degree of recession.
The challenge I am still seeing is the issue of honesty with those who claim they can provide services. While I have managed to eliminate some of the obvious ones that will rip-off, there are those who instead of coming clean, tries to use these white lies to drag things out. The reason for this is that maybe their sources are not working out but instead of admitting that upfront, they give you some story to buy time, unfortunately whatever they tried next may not work out, so in the end they looked like a real scam. Now these persons could have had good intention but I think sometimes the willingness to use lies to get bye also will reduce the quality of service. In other words, its like a catch 22. Whenever, you present the truth to customers, they will make a choice, continue to work with you or move on. That is very basic and long term common sense.
Anyway, on the plus side, I should be getting feedback on the actual performance of some trading platforms this week. These will provide very good returns so to get first hand knowledge that they work will be a great breakthrough for the next step in the financial journey.
In terms of the funding, there are still some genuine long term options out there but as I said, it takes time to weed out the decoy ones. I do feel that I am making progress overall in both learning and getting this done. I should have reasonable financing in place by end of the year at minimum. When I say reasonable, it means at least $500K funding.