How valuable is engineered serendipity to your business? On my way back from a meeting in the Watershed I thought I’d stick my head into UWE’s new business incubator facility in Bush House. Only opened just before Christmas they already have a good selection of tenants including the usual scattering of graduate start-ups (such as… Continue reading Serendipity engineering
Category: Business
Customer delight
In my last post I talked about business process modeling and how it could help understand the activities in a business prior to cost cutting for survival. In this post I’m going to riff on the concept of delighting your customers so they come back. The hygiene factor in delighting your customers is not pissing… Continue reading Customer delight
To finish first, first you have to finish
With the econoclapse in full effect, most companies are cutting back, trimming the fat, stopping non-essential spend. Which is good, but what if the budget you’re about to slash is the one that’s keeping you alive? The trouble with businesses is that once they get bigger than a couple guys with laptops in a Starbucks… Continue reading To finish first, first you have to finish
A real Live Guy
A variation of igFest‘s Moosehunt came to Bristol yesterday in the form of Vodafone’s LiveGuy, his mission (which it looks like he accepted with eagerness): I’m travelling from the north to the south of Britain, laying down clues to my whereabouts. Your mission is to find me – and maybe even bag yourself a netbook.… Continue reading A real Live Guy
Meet the Dragons
…after you’ve crossed my palm with silver. There’s always been a healthy market in one group of people selling access to a small second group of people that a third, larger group of people value. In many circumstances this is entirely right and proper. I was recently at the 31st International Conference on Small Business… Continue reading Meet the Dragons
How Many? Part the Second
I just posted an example where I’d worked up an Addressable Market calculation based on fairly good data. Of course, this data isn’t usually available; or it’s really expensive. One of the services that jbsh offer is business consultancy, mainly strategic growth plans and help with the business planning activity. So what’s the addressable market… Continue reading How Many? Part the Second
How many? Part the First
Something that makes an appearance fairly early in a business plan is the addressable market size. This is usually the point where after some mumbo-jumbo you’d end up with something like “…and thus we only need 1% to secure $100m turnover.” Mark Davies has a good post on the subject from a VC perspective but… Continue reading How many? Part the First
Key activity indicators of successful companies
What makes successful companies different? What a great research question, and one that the University of Strathclyde posited a couple years back. They followed up with 37 companies, in 8 EU countries and gathered over 1,000 stories (interview descriptions of processes and activities). Catherine Maguire from Strathclyde was presenting their findings. They began with the… Continue reading Key activity indicators of successful companies
Pleasure vs Pain
David Gilroy from Conscious Solutions nailed it at a Bristol Enterprise Network event last week when asked what changes he was making to his product to sell better in a recession. “Absolutely none”. The pitch to clients is changing, however, from how a great website can enhance your offering to one that points out how… Continue reading Pleasure vs Pain
Survival planning
On a dark and stormy Tuesday morning, with tales of economic melt down on R4, I wasn’t sure if anyone would turn up to Open Coffee. I shouldn’t have worried, Bristolians are made of stern stuff. We even had a friendly bank manager type along to see what the excitement was about. In addition to… Continue reading Survival planning