Tradition to Innovation

 

The U.S growth is slowing at 1.5% and so is job creation

The 17-nation eurozone’s unemployment rate reached the highest level
since the creation of the common currency 13 years ago, climbing to 11%
in April as employers slashed 110,000 jobs.

Greek unemployment rate has hit a record 21.7 percent.
A record 54% of young people are without work.
1.1 million people are out of a job in a population of just 10 million.

Spain is no better than Greek and U.K double dip recession is worse than expected

Globally, most governments are experiencing a slowdown.

However, the online economy is growing at an unprecedented rate, particularly the mobile platform

Top phone vendors worldwide: Samsung (29%) followed by Apple (23.1%) have impressive results.

"On June 29, 2007 the first iPhone was released. To date, more than 217 million iPhones
have been sold, and they're being used by construction workers to read blueprints, doctors
to diagnose patients, governments to improve services and parents to quiet their kids.

The App Store has also created a new mini-economy. Apple has paid out more than $5 billion to
developers and 18% of U.S. adults online have an iPhone

Samsung 2^nd quarter profits in 2012 nearly double previous year because of increased sales of smartphone.

Facebook with 900million users have tripled their mobile users in the same period. 

To benefit from this trend we should shift from traditional to innovative marketing.

1. Traditional marketing is based on experience, innovative marketing is based on psychology—the laws of human behavior that determine buying patterns.

2. Traditional marketing recommends that businesses increase their production and then diversify; innovative marketing recommends that you maintain your standard of excellence.

3. Traditional marketing encourages linear growth by adding new customers, innovative marketing encourages attracting new customers with excellent service.

4. Traditional marketing advocates destroying competition; innovative marketing urges collaboration.

5. Traditional marketing believes strongly in sales, innovative marketing believes strongly in relationships

6. Traditional marketing is slow to embrace technology; innovative marketing is dynamic and quick to embrace technology.

7. Traditional marketing identifies a few marketing weapons that are relatively costly; innovative marketing identifies several weapons that are free and relatively less costly.

8. Traditional marketing intimidates small-business owners; innovative marketing is a game changer for entrepreneurs.

Enjoy the Summer Olympics in London as you shift from tradition to innovation.

Walt Disney Business Ideas

Having good ideas doesn’t create guaranteed business success. At some point Experience becomes irrelevant, Accomplishments becomes everything.

Success is based on action.

Consider Walt Disney:
Walt dropped out of high school. He was kicked out of the army. He got fired from his first newspaper job for "not being creative enough." The real problem was that his creativity was stifled in those environment.

Occasionally something completely outside your control will cause you to fail. Most of the time, though, it's you. And that's okay. Every successful person has failed. Numerous times. Most of them have failed a lot more often than you. That's why they're successful now.
　
So, Walt struck out on his own. His early animations were a HUGE success with the public.

But Walt didn’t know how to manage money … and his business went bankrupt within two years.

In his second business attempt, he got the money management figured out by hiring someone else to handle that.

But this time he failed to secure legal rights to his creations. A business partner stole his cartoons…and his team of animators. Ouch!

Poor Walt was broke again.

Walt Disney didn't invent the cartoon. But he did ask, "Why are cartoons always only three minutes long?" He realized that with the right story, you could engage an audience with animation for just as long as you could with live actors

The point is if you can think, you can innovate. If you can ask "why?" you can change the world. Let other people do the hard work of figuring out how to make cars greener.

You can be the one who asks "Why?" You can hire people to figure out the how

Walt Disney’s third attempt to start an animation studio finally found success. But it didn’t come easy. Walt’s big dream was to create the first ever full-length animated motion picture.

Hollywood insiders ridiculed the idea as "Disney’s Folly." They said it would be the end of Disney Studios. They were almost right.

Disney started making Snow White in 1934, during the height of the Great Depression.

His studio ran out of money in 1937 and had to halt production with the film 90% finished.

But Walt refused to give up.

Think about the type of people you want to work with. Think about the types of customers you would enjoy serving. Think about the friends you want to have.

Then change what you do so you can start attracting those people. Hardworking people want to work with hardworking people. Kind people like to associate with kind people

First he mortgaged his home. Then he cobbled together a rough cut of the movie. Finally he gathered together a group of investors.

He gave them a private viewing of his unfinished masterpiece in a last-ditch effort to save the film. The persistence paid off. Walt secured his loans, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at Christmas time of 1937.

The public adored the movie and Disney made over $8 million in its initial release. That’s the equivalent of $122 million USD in today’s money.

The movie had only cost Disney $1.08 million to produce. Walt paid off all his loans, gave his animators a great bonus and expanded his studio. The rest is history.

Embrace every failure: Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently. Successful people are naturally drawn to successful people.

I Wish You Great Success

Croudfund your Business

Eurozone crises, UK double dip recession.......

•According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more women working than men.
•20.1 million women have bachelor’s degrees vs. 18.7 million men
•Unemployment for men: 9.3% compared to 7.6% for women.
•78% of the layoffs in recent years were men.
•More married women have unemployed husbands than ever before, a record 21%.
•Stay-at-home dads have doubled in recent years, making 1 out of 5 stay-at-home parents a father.

Not a pleasant reading for the Men and not a homerun for the Women.

The Right Management ran an online survey between April 16 and May 15. Only 19% said they were satisfied with their jobs, 44% said they were “unsatisfied.” nearly two-thirds of respondents, said they were not happy at work.

Need I say more, it is time to put our destiny in our own hands and run a business. The same economic fate befalls us all; male and female, young and old.

It is now cool for an MBA graduates to say I am working on a start up business as corporate life seemed to offer neither more safety nor more status among peers.

Funding and cashflow is often a major obstacle for startup businesses, the traditional sources of loans for early stage start-ups have largely dried up. Crowdfunding is starting to become a substantial source of much-needed capital. Crowdfunding will increasingly play a critical role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem — with or without the participation of the more established investment vehicles.

You can review the industry data on crowdfunding at crowdsourcing.org.

The April 2012 report estimates that 452 crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) raised nearly $1.5 billion in 2011, and the funding volume is on track to double to $2.8 billion in 2012.

Digital goods like softwares, games, films, and literature are the start-ups that can quickly attract these funds. More than 80% of campaigns in this category have raised over $25,000

Also

Check out Pinterest; the site is still evolving but It has already recorded over 10 million online users.
Next time you are on facebook please click on some of the adverts, facebook needs all the friends clicking to stay profitable.

Entrepreneurial ventures are still high risk but it is a risk we can accept as business ownership offer the best way to tackle economic and social problems. We still need talented graduates to reinvent our ailing enterprises as much as we need gifted entrepreneurs to build new ones.

See you on Forbes Rich List

Be The Next Business Genius

 

Are you Conceptual or Experimental?

According to Marc Freedman Conceptual geniuses tend to do their best work while young, producing breakthrough ideas early in their careers. But experimental geniuses, by contrast, need a long period of time to reach their peak, moving forward by trial and error, slowly accumulating the elements that will be integrated into their fully realized work.

Penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own, she wrote her 1st book on an old manual typewriter. 12 publishers rejected it! one year later a company agreed to publish it but insisted she get work elsewhere as there was no money in children’s books. J.K Rowling, the author of the hugely successful Harry Potter series later said, "You might never fail on the scale I did, but it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default."

Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity of any age group. In midlife, when jobs are hard to find the grey-haired applicants are usually not welcome. Recent research shows that one in four Americans between the ages of 44 and 70 are interested in starting their own businesses or running a nonprofit organizations within the next 5years that is a whooping 25 million people in the race. Guess what!!! there is room for everyone in business but not so with Jobs.

How would you rate Mark Zuckerberg against Warren Buffet: conceptual or experimental?

Buffet was the only son of three children born to the four term congressman Howard Buffett of Nebraska. As a kid he went from door to door selling chewing gum, coca-cola and weekly magazines. He worked in his grandfather grocery store and sold golf balls and stamp while in high school.

At age of 11, he bought shares for himself and his sister. while in high school he invested in his fathers company and bought a farm worked by a tenent farmer. By the time he finished college, Buffett had accumulated more than $90,000 in savings. Buffet attended Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1947 to 1949

Warren Buffett was an investment salesman at Buffett Falks from 1954 -56, at Graham Newsman Corporation from 1956-69 as a security analyst, at Berkshire Hathaway from 1970. He became a millionaire in 1962 and merge all his companies into Berkshire Hathaway. He is worth about $39 billion

What about Mark Zuckerberg?

Zuckerberg will likely be worth around $25 billion when Facebook goes public in 2012. In 2010, advertisers spent about $1.8billion on facebook alone. Mark Zuckerberg's base salary will receive a dramatic pay cut to just one dollar when he goes public. Zuckerberg's pay cut would reduce his income tax burden to zero.

Zuckerberg's salary cut is being compared to similar moves by other tech titans. Google's Eric Schmidt and Larry Page who are paid just $1 annual salaries. Steve Jobs took just $1 in salary from 1997 until his death last year. Other members of the one-percent/one-dollar club include Oracle's Larry Ellison and Hewlett-Packard's Meg Whitman.

Zuckerberg was born in 1984 and in febuary 2004 he started facebook from his Harvard Dorm at just 20years of age.

During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the company name Intelligent Media Group, he built a music player called the Synapse Media Player that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to Slashdot and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he chose instead to enroll at Harvard University in September 2002.

What about YOU?
Are You Concetual or Experimental?

Research shows that most people made their wealth from, banking, retail, property and creativity.

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not, nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not, unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent"


See You at the Top

Developing MicroMutinationals

Let us consider two recent issues around Human Resources and new employees.

1. Submit your Facebook password.

2. Remove your resume from Linknd.

• As a new employee what would you do?

• As HR would you make such demands?

In my opinion HR needs to evolve into a consultant to the business with clear understanding of business growth while matching and recruiting personnel to meet those needs. Otherwise, HR should face the axe in most establishment.

Micro Multinationals is a term used by Google economist Hal Varian, meaning small companies operating globally. I guess it is a good season to be an entrepreneur.

With mobility, internet access and cloud computing even the smallest companies can now afford the communications and infrastructural requirements that would be an envy of any blue-chip company few years ago.

As mature economies continue to stagnate the biggest risk may be over reliance on domestic demands. Businesses and small companies need to look particularly at emerging markets (BRIC) and fast growth markets (Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia)

The rising middle class promises sustained business growth and an opportunity to tap into a large consumer base; It may not be an easy leap for new entrants because business models for emerging markets are yet to be developed but keep the following in mind:
Go where your customers are going - Global wealth is moving from west to east.

Use familiar territory as springboard - For instance if starting business in Asia, it might be a good idea to launch from Hong Kong

Reverse Innovation - Your approach to product development is critical, where products developed for emerging markets can be adapted to domestic needs.

Leverage local Partners - Partnering with local knowledge and talents can boost competitive advantage.

Perform Due Diligence - There are institutional voids in emerging markets, such voids can be both an opportunity and a risk, its a good idea to watch where the big players are expanding.
According to PWC, here are a few challenges you may face, finding the right business partner 68%, cross cultural management 63%, finding adequate local talent 56%, security risks 49%, local regulatory requirements 48%, corruption 46%, local tax policy 42%, poor infrastructure 39%, supply chain 38%, contract dispute 36%, protecting intellectual property 32%.

With the challenges covered, what is the risk/ reward ratio?

Like the biblical lepers at the gate "if we stay here, we will die, if we go, we could die or we could live."

My Advice - Go

I Wish You Great Success

The Intelligent Business Ideas

One in every nine people on earth is a Facebook user and Twitter manages an average of 190 million tweets per day. If you’re not communicating with your customers via social channels as well as through email, you’re not reaching your audience where it lives, works and plays.

Berners Lee, the originator of the world wide web said that "the web is more of a social creation than a technical one, I designed it for social effect - to help people work together and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the web for me is to support and improve our web like existence in the world. While businesses, governments and other social bodies often wish to control the web to further each of their interests, they are the background to the web, as far as I am concerned not the foreground..........the web university leads to a thriving richness of diversity."

A Stanford Professor quit his job. But he doesn't plan to go to another prestigious university. Nope. He, like others has discovered the power of teaching online; in his case, he reached 160,000 students in a single online course on artificial intelligence. This is more than a story of online learning or mass dissemination. It proves a point: What once required a badge and a title within a centralized organization no longer does.

One of the medieval sages, Socrates believes that the interchange of speech leads to truth, he claims that the written word by contrast to the spoken word is untrustworthy and corrupting because it is detached from the actions, honors and character of whomever offered it.

Validate or disprove Socrates but crystalize your business idea.

For key Speeches on Business Ideas:

Sir Richard Branson - Founder of Virgin
Martha Lane Fox - Founder of lastminute.com
Sir Terry Leahy - former CEO of Tesco
Rt Hon the Lord Heseltine - Founder of Haymarket Publishing and former Deputy Prime Minister
Steve Felice - President, Consumer, Small and Medium Business at Dell Inc.
Paul Lindley - Founder of Ella’s Organic
Robin Rowland - Founder of Yo Sushi!
Lara Morgan - Founder of Company Shortcuts
Doug Richard - Founding Dragons’ Den Panelist and Founder of School for Startups
Ashok Rao - Chairman of TiE Global Board of Trustees


Most modern institution promote mass education, one size fits all, an international curriculum that remain Eurocentric. However, the cyber culture is here to change that, and it bears similarity to the early adoption of letters that broke free from the religious medieval universities.

Steve Jobs statement on intelligent ideas "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it; they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

See You at the Top

Understanding The Business of Marketing

Just like our offline personality, your online persona now forms a significant part of your professional identity. Understanding how those personas align, diverge, and complement one another is crucial to ensure our leadership effectiveness, on- and offline.

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group in a study supported by web giant Google, it is assumed that in four years 3bn people will be using the internet, or nearly 50% of the world's population. Right now, every year about 200 million people are going online for the very first time.

Before we can maximize our online footprint, let us try to understand the leadership responsibility of marketing in a basic offline setting.

A Professor at one of the Business schools was explaining marketing concepts to the students:

1 Direct Marketing: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!"

2 Advertising: You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: "He's very rich. Marry him."

3 Telemarketing: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me."

4 Public Relations: You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: "By the way, I'm rich. Will you marry me?"

5 Brand Recognition: You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says: "You are very rich! Can you marry! Me?"

6 Customer Feedback: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.

7 Demand and Supply: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she introduces you to her husband.

8 Competition: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person comes and tells her: "I'm rich. Will you marry me?" and she goes with him.

9 Market Restriction: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: "I'm rich, Marry me!" Your wife arrives.

I hope you will agree that the professors' explanations are accurate and non-complicated.

Your offline activity as well as your online activities such as on twitter, linkdn and facebook will be directly proportional to your success.

I Wish You Great Success