Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’
Is Podcasting the Hot New Media Trend?
Podcasting was cool when I started blogging four years ago, but as social media became fashionable, Facebook and Twitter made podcasting look a tad obsolescent and dowdy. So why is podcasting having a resurrection? It is due to two key factors.
Read More Are You Leveraging Your Brand Advocates?
Every organization, from small businesses to nonprofits, has brand advocates. They are the people who toot your horn, recommend your products, services, or mission, and share their passion with many others.
Read More Be Greener on Earth Day 2013
Today is Earth Day 2013, and it’s a time for business owners to think about their green initiatives and the things they can do to be more green. Office Depot surveyed 1,000 small and medium-sized business about their environmental consciousness, and they had some really interesting results. I want to share some of the highlights—maybe they’ll help your thinking about these questions.
Read More Intellectual Property Awareness
What happens if you’re trying to do business on a national or global level? One thing is certain. You’re going to have intellectual property issues to deal with. And you may not even realize that these issues exist. Here are a few things to think about in determining whether you need outside help.
Protecting Your Intellectual Property
When you’ve taken the time and effort to develop a unique product or service, you will want to protect your intellectual property so that other companies are not able to make money off of your ideas. There are a variety of forms of protection for intellectual property that you can get in the United States, and it’s important for you to know the differences between them and what you need to do to apply for these protections for your business.
Read More Developing Entrepreneurial Employees
In any business, the people we hire make a huge difference. The right people in the right spots at the right time can push you to new heights, while a bad hire can set you back. A great asset as you organize your business for growth is building around entrepreneurial employees.
Read MoreBuilding a Brand: How Three Successful Sites Did It
At the beginning of the year, AG Beat released a very cool list of 60 brands to watch during 2012. Not all of their predictions were correct—KeepSum, which many thought would be the Groupon of real estate, has been offline for a few months now—but many of them were spot on. Three in particular—OpenCongress, Klout, and Pinterest—did so well during 2012 that they have now become household names. But what did they do differently than the other 57 brands, and how did they do it? What stars aligned to bring these three to the limelight?
Read More Keeping the Entrepreneurial Spirit Alive
As any business ages and grows, it will change. You don’t always do things the same way you did as a startup. The quest for innovation and new approaches to problems often gradually give way to a focus on incremental improvements and doing what you’ve always done, just a little bit better. This problem is part of what is widely known as The Innovator’s Dilemma, after the title of the book by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen.
Read More Building a Culture of Growth
A culture that encourages and rewards growth can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you build an organization, the right emphases and values can be a strong factor for growth. It requires every member of the team, from top to bottom, to buy into the right principles and beliefs.
Read More Encourage Independent Thinking
Encouraging independent thinking among your team members will generate new ideas and give everyone a stake in your business’s success. To make it happen, you must be willing to listen and engage with everyone, taking advantage of the different experiences and perspectives of your team members.
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