Donald Mitchell's Articles in Business

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How to Enjoy More Entrepreneurial Success by Increasing Your Know-How with Practical Learning Should learning put lots of money in your pocket? Small business owner Dr. Tane Caesar thinks so and this article explains how you can gain those monetary benefits. How Do You Focus on Excellence? This article explores a method for helping an audience appreciate the potential of developing more excellence. Learn to Build an Ideal, Secure Lifestyle Many people get caught up in business careers that make them unhappy. How can you live a great life and be successful in your business career? This article explains how you can learn to do both and includes questions to help you do so. Be Prepared to Succeed: Do Your Homework before Starting New Businesses and Jobs A little homework can make all the difference in starting new businesses or new jobs. This article describes the benefits of the right homework, and tells you what to do to prepare for success. Smoke Out and Eliminate Pesky Long-Term Problems Every organization is hobbled by problems that everyone knows about, but no one has solved. This article describes methods for finding and accomplishing lasting solutions. Peter Drucker Points Out a Task This article shows how having an expert coach can make tremendous differences in developing an entrepreneurial business. If You Think You Know How to Apply the Business Theory, Check with an Expert Anyway Graduates leave school filled with powerful-sounding theories; theories that are often difficult to apply. When first working on applying those theories, check with an expert before finalizing your decision. To Start a Successful Consulting Firm, Learn from Your Clients Clients will teach you what you need to know about what services they need and how they want those services provided. But you have to be a sincere student of your current and potential clients to gain the right learning. Be Challenged by the Best to Be the Best: Peter Drucker Asks a Question and Makes an Observation Do you want to surpass your wildest dreams? Take your biggest dream to the best thinker you can find and see what happens. Boldly Take Your Business Where No One Has Gone Before Aim to go beyond copying what others do to gain global breakthroughs for your business. But the right kind of copying can help get you where you want to go. Online Education Provides a Career Gangplank for a Retiring Naval Officer Do you plan to stay aboard ship for your whole career? If you want to change into a civilian career, you can study while at sea to prepare for new leadership challenges. Learn from the School of Hard Knocks to Gain Business Career Success The article looks at the hard-won lessons of the school of hard knocks for building a successful business career. Design, Propose, and Describe Potential Business Models for Stakeholder Evaluation and Improvement Take stakeholders into account in creating superior business models and you'll make more improvements that will work better. Business Model Innovation--Share Benefits Widely to Provide More for Each Stakeholder Benefits are expandable, depending on who benefits and how much they can gain. Business model innovation needs to take this into account. Instill a Spirit of Teamwork and Cooperation for Mutual Advantage Stakeholders of an organization can accomplish more by cooperating than by standing at arms-length. This article explores the advantages of such cooperation. Master Taking the Affordable Risks to Reduce or Eliminate the Big Risks Business model innovation requires careful examination and selection risks. This article explains more about how to do this. Implement a Valuable Business Model This article looks at how to go from having ideas for a new business model into implementing one successfully. Improve Your Business Model Concepts While Testing Specific Changes Long delays can be avoided when business model innovation implementation is investigated while changes are being tested. Four Questions You Should Always Ask Before Putting in Cost Reductions Most cost reductions cause more harm than good. Check your cost reductions with these questions before putting the cost cuts in place and you'll have much more success. How to Select Among Promising Cost-Reduction Tests If you are lucky and imaginative, you should have more cost-reduction tests to run than you have time and resources to do so. This article looks at how to pick just the most promising tests. Find Problems with Cost Reductions and Then Make Improvements Most cost reduction proposals are flawed. But those flaws can help you locate appropriate cost reductions to test. This article shows you how to spot more flaws and make better use of what you learn. Choose Cost-Reduction Tests That Fit Your Business Model Opportunities A 300-pound person cannot wear clothes designed for 120-pound person. Cost reduction tests also need to be tailored to fit the circumstances. Assume the New Cost-Cutting Ideas Will Hurt Customers and Raise Costs Business leaders need to be more skeptical of cost-reduction ideas . . . before testing them out. Keep the Flies Out of the New Business Model's Soup This article contains detailed directions for avoiding harmful cost cuts. If You Need to Get Something Done on Time, Ask a Busy Person to Help You This article explains the six keys to success for accomplishing a great deal more than others do. Acquisitions: Consider the Potential of Other Operations When Included in Your Company's Business Acquisitions can be very successful when your organization can make the other operation much more effective. Employ Alternative Technologies That Offer Cost Advantages for the Entire Business System To profit the most go beyond reducing your costs through technology . . . to lowering costs from suppliers through to customers' customers. Rather Than Get It Wholesale, Access What You Need for Close to Free Don't pay anything if you don't have to. Reduce Costs for All Stakeholders and Yourself Reducing stakeholder costs creates faster and more profitable growth. Look to Reduce Customers' Costs as Well as Your Own Many cost reductions simply burden customers with more costs and drive customers away. This article looks at using cost reductions to attract more customers. Look for Total Company Cost Reductions Related to a Customer A focus on total company cost reductions helps avoid cutting costs that are offset by cost increases in unexpected places. How Would Testing Delays Help or Hurt Your Ability to Check Different Price Structures? Pick the wrong time to test a new price, and you'll get back bad information. Here are some ways to avoid making that mistake. How Do Your Price Tests Potentially Impact Your Customers' Relationships with Their Customers? Price tests can be a mistake when they create friction between customers and their customers. Here are some things to consider to avoid doing that. What If You Knew You Could Only Succeed? You can accomplish more than you think you can by working on gaining more confidence, knowledge, and experience. Evaluate How Well Competitors Can Negate the Advantages of Your Proposed Pricing Structures Many price tests are ruined by unanticipated competitive reaction. Assume the worst before you approve such a test. Analyze Your Price Structure Proposals Think through what could go wrong and you'll avoid many pricing mistakes. Price Proposals: Select the Best Ideas to Pursue Everyone has an idea for how to improve pricing, but most of those ideas aren't even worth testing. How can you avoid the worst of the wrong ones? Tough Love Helps a Financial Executive Meet His Career Goals Many organizations don't offer mentoring bosses. When that's the case, you may want to rely on taking courses from professors who have been senior executives in major companies to get the mentoring you need for a fast-track career. Encourage Price Test Proposals Get more good price-improving ideas by involving people who aren't normally expected to think about pricing. Use Price to Attract More Attention for New Business Models Low prices get attention better than claims of better offerings. How Not to Write a Business Book A lot of "experts" tell you easy ways to write books. Here are reasons why some of that advice doesn't work. Keep People Up-to-Date to Gain the Most Help from Stakeholders A lot of people feel discouraged by the work involved in sharing what they are working on. What if you have nothing to report? Make Progress by Learning from the Most Succcessful Both by studying the most successful and partnering with experts, you can make a lot more performance improvements whether you are writing about management practices or applying them. Thinking about Marketing Stickiness How do you make people be interested in and focused in on a new concept that isn't yet proven? This article uses a case history to describe how this can be accomplished. A Bullied Child, Abandoned at Birth, Becomes a Global Leader in Dental Innovation and Education This article explains a four-step process that can be used to go from where you are to much more business success. Be More Successful in Testing Value-Enhancing Business Model Innovations You can improve the odds of developing good value-oriented business model innovations by carefully thinking through the questions in this article. How to Handle Having Too Many Successful Business Model Innovations to Implement After experience with defining business model innovations and adding lots more tests, you'll reach a point where you have more successes than you can handle. What do you do? Add Profitable Business Model Innovation When You Don't Have Many Successes with Innovation Tests Most organizations don't have many proven ideas for business model innovation to implement. This article presents answers for that situation. Find Simple, Cheap, and Easy Tests That Excite Your Organization to Locate Better Business Models Many good sounding business model concepts flop in market tests. Make these tests easy-to-do, and lots of innovation mistakes will be avoided. Diagnose What's Missing from Your Business Model to Triple Profits Ask new questions about your business model, and you'll find opportunities for new ways to improve. Select the Best Opportunities for Establishing a Vastly More Profitable Business Model Most organizations have far more opportunities to create improved business models than they can implement. How should you choose a new model? Six Degrees of Opportunity: Connecting Knowledge in All Directions This article describes how re-forming your business model can allow your take knowledge and provide and receive more value from it. For the Most Profitable Business Model, Repeat What You Have Done, But Differently Take another look at your thinking about business model innovation, and you'll find new opportunities you missed the last time. Before Establishing Your Business Model, Anticipate the Potential Effects of What You Can't Control Don't forecast, but do think about the future so that you will have a business model that will do well . . . regardless of what comes next. Boost Your Business Model by Borrowing New Expertise You Have Not Thought of Using Before This article looks at how adding new competence from the outside can speed and strengthen your business model innovation to add profitable growth. Open Your Horizons to the Many Forms of Value Look for value-enhancing opportunities that most competitors ignore. Value: Locate Ideas to Create More Sales from Improved Value at the Current Price If you want to improve the profitability of your business model the most, you need to add value without increasing price. If Your Glasses Are the Wrong Prescription, You Won't See Opportunities in Front of You CEOs are focusing on the wrong things now. They need to shift to continuing business model innovation. Lack of Focus Among Large Company CEOs Will Drive Accelerating Business Model Innovation Few are focused on business model innovation. This means an unusually good opportunity for those who do. Turn Business Model Leadership into Industry Leadership Can a small industry player use a new business model to become the industry leader? You bet. This article discusses how this might be done in gold mining. Create a Gold Mine of Improved Business Models What's better than owning a gold mine? Having a better business model for extracting gold. This article explores how business model innovation has revolutionized the gold mining industry. Respond to Rapid Increases in Business Model Innovation This article contains a forecast of future trends in business models that you need to be prepared to implement. Get Ready for Rough Competition from New Business Models The competitive landscape is shifting to emphasize business model innovation. The pace of this shift is accelerating. Are you ready? Upgrade to a New Business Model Rather Than Try to Get More Out of Your Existing Business Model This article asks what you as a leader and entrepreneur should focus on: better business models or increasing the performance of your existing business models. How Should You Evaluate Your Current Business Model? Most people would like a better business model, but are unaware of how to see where the current business model can be strengthened. This article addresses that need. High-Payoff Business Model Innovations: A Lemonade Stand Example Simply copying what everyone else does won't deliver an improved business model. This article shows how focusing on high-payoff innovation choices can help provide more profit and growth. Understand the Seven Dimensions of a Business Model Through an Example A child's lemonade stand provides an example of what a business model is. The Seven Dimensions of a a Business Model "Experts" are fond of telling entrepreneurs to have an advantaged business model, but seldom define what a business model is. This article provides a clear definition that can be used to start thinking about how to create an advantaged business model Strive for an Ideal Business Model An ideal business model brings exponentially greater rewards than a good business model does. This article describes the ideal approach. What Is a Good Business Model? Leaders can use this article to test the quality of their business model. Don't Be Blinded by Spreadsheet Illusions of a Golden Future This article looks at how leaders should focus their attention to make the most profitable improvements. Business Model Innovation Is More Important Than New Technology to Your Success Most organizations today spend a fortune on anticipating and applying new technologies to enhance their effectiveness. Yet most business model innovations provide bigger payoffs and are easier to implement. Is it time you shifted your focus? A Narrowed Focus Can Concentrate Business Model Innovation Success EMC, the data storage giant, went from being a marginal also-ran into an industry powerhouse by first concentrating its business model innovation where the value would be highest. This article provides a case history you can learn from. The Future Value of Business Model Innovation Those who provide continuing business model innovations rapidly and easily will gain exponentially larger competitive advantages and profit gains. The Competitive Importance of Continuing Business Model Innovation You can gain lasting competitive advantages. How? By continually upgrading your business model in more profitable ways. Use Curiosity and Questions to Improve Your Business Model This article demonstrates how one man built a very profitable single-person business through continuing business model innovation to add more benefits for his customers. Build Market Leadership and Prosperity What is the job of a leader? This article argues that it is to continually upgrade to better business models rather than to improve the old ones. How Can You Find and Study Examples of Continuing Business Model Innovators? This article describes a methodology that executives and managers can use to locate and understand role models for continuing business model innovation. A New Approach to Measuring Strategic Best Practices Reveals New Lessons This article describes what was learned from the first real-time study of CEO best practices in creating unrivaled growth on a continuing basis. What One Thing Can Most Improve a Company's Growth and Profits? Continuing business model innovation is what company leaders must do best in setting a strategy and a learning agenda. Nth Degree Strategy Internet Analysis Example -- Walt Disney's Theme Parks Developing superior strategies involving the Internet is easiest if you assume vast future potential for the Internet and back into what could be done. In many cases, you'll find that current technology permits the concepts to be implemented now. An Nth Degree Strategic Analysis of the Internet Nth degree thinking allows us to make extreme assumptions about irresistible forces as a way to devising strategies that leave us better off regardless of what the forces do. This article applies that approach to analyzing Internet effects on a business. Is the Internet an Irresistible Force of the Result of One? Before choosing optimal strategies towards irresistible forces, you have to identify those forces. This article looks at whether or not the Internet is an irresistible force. Internet Irresistible Force Lessons The Internet's business opportunities can be best exploited by anticipating what the future best practices will be that no one is yet doing. An Action Plan for Irresistible Force Management Nine action steps can help you get the most benefits from irresistible forces outside of your control. Improve Effectiveness Through an Expanded Focus on Irresistible Forces Think broader and look further for irresistible forces to gain the most profit advantage. Embrace Irresistible Forces: Seek Out the Forces and Take Action Now This article is a call to taking action to make use of irresistible forces to gain profit and growth advantages while becoming more stable and safe. Improve Profits and Effectiveness Through a Competitive Focus on Irresistible Forces When you turn your look into irresistible forces towards creating competitive advantage in serving customers, you'll begin to spot large profit opportunities you can use against the competition. Improve Irresistible Profit Growth Through Repetition of Essential Questions Focus, focus, focus! Many gurus provide that advice. But what should you focus on? The most important profit growth questions, over and over. Let's Go One on One to Set the Best Competitive Strategy for Exponential Profit Growth Considering how each customer is unique helps you build a uniquely effective competitive strategy. Repeating the Irresistible Profit Growth Process Focuses Competitive Thinking Out-thinking and out-performing competitors is essential to achieving irresistible profit growth. Repeat the Irresistible Growth Process to Expand Your Profit Scope Repetition of the Irresistible Growth process will cause you to locate more forces and opportunities than you observed at first. Repeating the Irresistible Growth Process Improves Your Profit Results Building skill in irresistible growth management will bring you greater opportunities and better implementation. Step Eight: Repeat Steps One Through Seven for More Effectiveness in Irresistible Force Management Each time you repeat the first seven steps of the irresistible force management process, you will make exponential improvements in your performance. The article looks at example to explain this point. Use Custom Incentives To Stimulate Breakthroughs People are likely to respond to different sorts of rewards for using their skills well. Be sure to use the right rewards for each person. Use Hands-On Apprenticeships to Create Breakthrough Performance Continuing skill expansion is critical to creating breakthroughs. Standard Incentive Programs Don't Fit Anybody Customize incentives to each person to help them perform at their best. Complete Your Organization's Skill Box After assessing what skills you lack for dealing with irresistible forces, you need to add those skills. This articles explores how to do that. Check Your Skill Box to See What's Missing A missing skill can leave your organization motionless like a car without gasoline. Step Seven: Enhance Your People's Ability to Achieve the Benefits of Irresistible Force Management Building and motivating your organization are key elements in achieving the full benefits of irresistible force management. This article points out that critical skills are probably missing in your enterprise, and that they must be quickly added through hiring, training, and by adding partners and suppliers.
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