Forum Newspaper Articles 2015

Digitizing Your Business Via the Choiceboard

Last month we discussed why digitizing your business to match your firm’s business design to its evolving key issues is almost an imperative in today’s business world. We said the twentieth century has produced powerful breakthroughs in the management of bits of information and this has culminated in what Adrian Slywotsky calls the “Choice Board”. Recall he is one of my favorite business thinkers, writers and consultants. I will paraphrase from him in this article and use my experience as well.

How Digital Is Your Business – Really

Last month we discussed your firm’s business design, a relatively new concept, and said as your key business issues change so should your business design. This though creates an extremely fluid situation that can make your people very nervous. One of the keys in dealing with so much fluid change is to make sure your business is as digital as possible. Once again I borrow from the brilliant work of Adrian Slywotsky and my experience and research.

Creating Your Unique Business Design for Results

Last month we discussed why firm valuation is the best “win” metric for your business. This holds if your firm is a private for-profit or a publically traded firm. We said though that measure and its components are lagging in nature. What causes increases in firm valuation in the first place? For this we need to discuss leading indicators and that is the subject of this article.

The Importance of a Win Metric for Your Business

Here we will discuss why choosing a single dominant “win metric” for your business is vital. Choosing one win metric over another can have huge ripple effects in your business. Let’s have some fun with pondering these issues from the viewpoint of professional competitive golf to see how changing the win metric in competitive golf can have huge repercussions. The same relationships apply to business in my view.

Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

If your firm has crafted its mission statement, can you say it without reading it? Most people in firms that have a mission statement do not know what it is without reading it. Wow. Are mission statements worthless then? No they are not and we will discuss mission statements in the context of the more general question – “Can You Say What Your Firm’s Strategy Is?”

Can Our Homegrown Entrepreneurs Compete?

Last month we discussed whether the I-20 Corridor could become the next Austin, Texas, a region that enables the creation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem to support torrents of new business venture creation.  Ending that article I posed a caveat to all of the good things that have happened in our region around entrepreneurship to date: For new ventures the key resource needed is money. Investment will flow to its highest expected returns adjusted for risk. Why would we expect our homegrown entrepreneurs to be better than entrepreneurs in other parts of the U.S. and world who might offer higher expected returns adjusted for risk for investors?

Can the I-20 Corridor Be the Next Austin, Texas?

Austin, Texas, a vibrant community of established corporations like Dell and Whole Foods, is also a beehive and incubator of entrepreneurship and new business creation. TeVido, Square Root and Novati are only some of the business ventures born and grown via the lifeblood of an entrepreneurship community or “ecosystem” of ideas, resources and funding. Some folks in our area, which we will call the I-20 Corridor from Shreveport/Bossier to Monroe, think we can be the next Austin, Texas. Do you agree?