Although I orginally wrote this article for small business owners on the Whale Hunters blog, the ideas explored here can empower companies of all sizes. If you are aiming to grow your business, consider how you can hitch your star to the trends that are taking business by storm:
#1. Business Innovation Is Transforming Some Businesses, Making Others Unique
I am not referring to the kind of costly innovation that requires a scientific degree. Business innovation is just as exciting - which means doing business differently, creating new business models or updated processes, landing new customers by re-packaging or enhancing a current offering.
Think about what could be different about your business that would make it truly different. What can you do to advance your mission? What are you seeing that the mass markets are missing? Are you driving the right behaviors internally to capture new business?
In medicine – health care is a business too – non-technical innovation drives effectiveness and “market position.” Dr. Fred Sklar, President of Neurosurgeons for Children in Dallas, worked solo for 11 years as he built an extremely high level of activity. In business terms, he was building a new market in the Southwest. He then figured out how to scale the practice and structure it to provide the same quality of care to both paying and indigent patents. The dream came true. His group became a leader in its field, and Sklar, with a multi-specialty team, separated the conjoined Egyptian twins at Dallas’ Children’s Hospital in 2005.
Dr. Sklar says that their innovative business model makes them unique. Every surgical partner at Neurosurgeons for Children is equal. There are no super-stars, no room for less than exceptional. “Our group is unique in many ways,” he told me. “We pay our expenses and divide the earnings evenly. That’s not how it usually works in a surgical group. I don’t want one patient to be more or less desirable than another.” Clearly unwieldy egos can’t tolerate this culture. What about yours?
#2. Digital Leadership Creates New Avenues for Growth
Digital is leveling the playing field, empowering small business to do more, know more and grow faster. Technology will continue to transform industries and blur the boundaries between them. All businesses are advised to operate in real time, which is what the consumer is expecting. Continue reading…
April 15th was tax day for most, but for women leaders in construction, architecture and engineering, it was day 1 of Groundbreaking Women in Construction, a conference sponsored by the Women Builders Council and McGraw Hill. I had the pleasure of leading the first event of the day, a workshop on Visionary Leaders, the New Champions in Business. Here’s what I did and what I learned.
My premise was simple: 1. Visionary leaders, the New Leader in business, will be the most successful executives in the next decade. 2. There are major differences in the way these new leaders operate to create their unique approach. 3. Once leaders embrace the hallmarks of this new paradigm, they have a clear vision of success and a way to get there. 4. As soon as we begin to shift our mindset and expose our organizations to the hallmarks of the new leader, we go beyond hierarchy and power to unleash the real potential of our businesses, colleagues, and leaders. Continue reading…
Alex Bogusky is co-chairman of MDC Partners’ Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the award winning advertising agency, and chief creative insurgent of MDC, a portfolio of marketing communications companies. Bogusky is a game-changer, and Crispin Porter is known for changing the way people interact with brands.
Bogusky challenged conventional wisdom at the Mirren New Business Conference on April 13, 2010. Among the conventions that he questioned was the idea that you can learn from your mistakes.
“I’ve never learned anything from my mistakes,” Bogusky said. “Again, I hate conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is learning from your mistakes. What about learning from your successes? That’s where I’ve focused. Like, this works, we better get down and study…this.” Continue reading…
“Recovery demands a clear-out of the old-guard,” says Luke Johnson in the Financial Times, March 17. If the big ideas of this decade are reinvention, we need leaders who can innovate.
Innovative leaders make the most of opportunities when they arise. They step up to the challenge when there’s a need and look for opportunities to do things differently. They pay attention to the environment and believe that they can instigate change.
Roger Ochs, President of HD Vest Financial, a subsidiary of Wells Fargo, believes that leaders are developed by giving people the responsibility or by letting them take responsibility without having the authority. “You earn the authority from your peers,” he observed. Continue reading…
There’s strong agreement that innovation will drive success in modern business, yet a growing concern that companies are not taking the steps to innovate. The business press asserts that innovation is hard to measure, expensive and often compromised for short-term gains. CEOs don’t understand innovation, we’re told - they do little more than talk about new ideas. I feel compelled to set the record straight, based on my research and personal business experience.
Fear not, America’s businesses will not sink into oblivion and stagnation, at least not in the next few years. The urgent call for action ignores what’s actually happening throughout the private sector. Now more than ever, innovation is important… and there are leaders who are getting it right. Further, many of these executives are baby boomers, the very generation that missed learning about innovation in business school. Continue reading…