How to Outwit Your Smartest Competitors

Let’s face it. There aren’t many stupid people running Fortune 2000 companies. At the same time, I know plenty of ridiculously successful entrepreneurs who studied beer, pizza and the opposite sex in college. (Sorry, Mom and Dad.) Come to think of it, many of my entrepreneurial friends never went to college at all. So how is it…

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Whoa. Wow! Hmmm. Yes! (How Steve Jobs Got It Right)

Credit Dr. Mark Goulston with this headline. Mark teaches that there is a process to innovation that can be summed up with these four words. In fact, he states, that’s exactly how Steve Jobs described his “aha moment.” So let’s paraphrase Mr. Jobs as we describe this process. Jobs was invited to Xerox Parc research…

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10 Ways an Entrepreneur Can Build a Winning Culture

If an entrepreneur can’t build a culture of excitement and commitment at a startup, the chances of long-term success are negligible. It simply doesn’t matter how great your solution is. Every investor knows this. That’s why they insist on spending a day with your team as part of the due diligence process. A winning culture…

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How the Leapfrog Effect May Affect Your Business

The “leapfrog effect” has become a global development buzzword, and it’s easy to see why. It’s an appealingly optimistic concept: the term refers to the phenomenon, in fast-growing emerging economies, of technological advances permitting shortcuts in infrastructure building. Instead of working through all previous iterations of a technology, countries are able to jump straight to…

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A Creative Way to Get Products in Front of Willing Buyers

Twitter is adding buy buttons. Instagram is doing the same. Amazon offers same-day grocery delivery in several markets. All of these are retail experiments to discover the ideal strategies that use technology to connect buyers to products in the systems that buyers find most convenient. It’s a very creative area in retail and one where…

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Why Software Subscription Serves It Up Fresh

Take General Mills and its goal to eliminate artificial flavors and colors in cereals due to the consumer demand for simple ingredients. That’s easier said than done when entire product lines, food production, and recipes require overhauls on a massive scale. But, in the end, it’s a matter of market survival and a better product. Waves of…

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The Next Wave of Manufacturing Industry Trends

Time and technology wait for no one, especially when you’re talking about the ever-evolving, fast-paced world of hardware manufacturing. Not only are advances being made in materials and connectivity capabilities, but hardware VC firms and incubators such as Bolt and Lemnos Labs are flipping the script on the traditional way of doing business—from seed funding to expensive tools and…

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How is a Business Ecosystem a Key Driver to Success?

In a Harvard Magazine interview, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Chair and Director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, explained: “In Silicon Valley, there is a sense that you prosper only because you’re surrounded by lots of resources that make it possible to succeed, beyond what your own entity controls. Think of it as your garden,…

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What Uber Is and Isn’t—and How You Can Benefit

Uber is celebrating its fifth anniversary and it certainly has accomplished a lot in five years. It’s hard to imagine another company that has so quickly established a global presence. The last figures I saw said that Uber operates in 300 cities strewn across 58 countries. Let’s compare it to Starbucks, which certainly has an…

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