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The 7 Biggest Founder Mistakes

Good counsel here for all entrepreneurs … Mistakes to avoid when starting new entrepreneurial ventures

http://www.inc.com/dana-severson/the-7-biggest-founder-mistakes-that-you-can-learn-from.html?cid=sf01001

Paul B. Silverman

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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How To Be A Startup CEO– Interview with Bing Gordon Kleiner Perkins

I am reviewing materials for an upcoming entrepreneurship book and found an excellent interview on how to be a startup CEO with Bing Gordon, partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm. While posted in December 2011, Bing Gordon’s counsel for startup CEO’s is right on target today, particularly his points about the need to Quantify Objectives with Trackable Milestones”. Gordon describes Intel’s ‘OKR’ or ‘Objectives and Key Results’ management approach – managers set objectives and identify and track 2 to 3 results, and managers are expected to achieve 70 percent of results. Very important discipline which helps companies grow and send messages to Boards and investors. Gordon also makes excellent points about “The CEO’s Need to Balance Management and Entrepreneurial Responsibilities”, emphasizing the need to nuture and balance entrepreneurial culture with clear focus on tightly managing results. Not an easy tightrope to walk as we all know, but a “build it and they will come” philosophy clearly doesn’t work in today’s rapidly changing global entrepreneurial market.

 You can view Bing Gordon’s presentation at http://tinyurl.com/6vc5hy8 . The 28 minute video is well worth watching. At the time, I also posted comments on the video which you may find helpful- you can see these at       http://tinyurl.com/l7nfuzo.   

                                                                                          Paul B. Silverman   July 2014

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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Good Analytics Article- “…Reaping Returns from Analytics”

Good insightful article in the October 18, 2013 issue of Information Management on analytics by Narendra Mulani who is Managing Director of Accenture Analytics. I posted comments sharing some additional perspectives and related opportunities I foresee. One clear message here- the analytics market is positioned for major growth and as I noted in my comment related to healthcare analytics, today we are only seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in this sector.

Check out at http://tinyurl.com/nyrd8q2

Here is a copy of the comments I posted:

Excellent article. I am pleased to share some comments based on my experience in the analytics arena.

Analytics clearly provide powerful tools to optimize business processes and value chain functions. What is often overlooked is understanding the impact of external and industry factors critical to maximize performance and mitigate risk. Some studies, for example, show that external factors have a 45 percent impact on ROA. Ignore these, and your analytics may address only 55 percent of the critical performance and risk drivers.

How will global environmental policies impact your business; what is impact of changing healthcare regulations on new drug development and clinical trials; what new market opportunities are projected based on disruptive innovation in your business; how will privacy and transborder data restrictions impact your business today and tomorrow. These are external drivers which can create new markets and ‘destroy’ existing ones.

Addressing how the external environment impacts your business demands analytics addressing STEEP analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, Peer Group modeling, and similar diagnostics. And these are not static analyses- change is the only constant in today’s global environment, and having current data is critical. The winning formula- couple traditional external analysis tools, such as STEEP, with unstructured exogenous data analytics provides dynamic, real time insights on external market and business portfolio impact. Integrate these insights with internal data analytics to develop ‘actionable’ analytics. Today’s fiercely competitive global markets demands this analytics rigor.

One interesting statistic suggests 85 percent of today’s analytics solutions address CRM applications, improving the performance and operations dealing with customers and related supply chain activities. The remaining 15 percent are emerging exciting analytics directions that offer exciting opportunities.

For example, in the legal arena, Technology-Assisted Review or “TAR”, uses computer models, machine learning, and analytics to sort millions of documents identifying relevant and privileged documents to support litigation with dramatic cost savings. TAR technologies are rapidly evolving and the acceptance of TAR is now being tested in state and Federal courts.

Analytics will also play an expanded role in traditional corporate strategy management. Fortune 500 companies have thousands of business portfolios often managed using traditional analytics, e.g., hurdle rates, IRR, others. Understanding with precision how these individual portfolios align with the Company’s overall strategic plan, what are the overall projection risks, where are the corporate exposures based on both internal and external factors, are the exciting new directions being pursued by leading edge companies.

While analytics applications in healthcare are accelerating, we are at the tip of the iceberg. Using machine learning to optimize clinical care and reduce longitudinal costs for patient care; integrating healthcare claims data, EHR and genomic data to evaluate patient outlook for both clinical and insurance applications; tracking and analyzing medications and vital signs to assess drug efficacy and adverse effects for drug trial screening; are some of the many exciting new directions we see emerging that will redefine today’s healthcare system improving both quality and cost performance.

Senior management will be challenged to understand these new analytics applications to improve their global performance and mitigate risk. Even business schools must adapt- new analytics tools are reshaping our traditional approach to strategy development and competitive analysis.

Clearly exciting times lie ahead for all players in the global analytics market

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

Paul B. Silverman

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HOW BOOK MARKETING/PROMOTION DRIVES CLIENT BUSINESS AND SELLS PRINT BOOKS

BOOK SIGNING AND MEET THE AUTHOR AND  EVENT AT  EXPO EAST CONFERENCE  ATLANTIC CITY : HOW BOOK  MARKETING/PROMOTION DRIVES CLIENT BUSINESS AND SELLS PRINT BOOKS

I was invited to do a book signing and “Meet the Author” event June 5th at the Expo East promotions expo in Atlantic City, NJ. for my first book in the   “Worm on a Chopstick” series,   Understanding Today’s Entrepreneurial Age: Directions, Strategies, Management Perspectives, and discuss my second book planned for release in late 2012.

One of the largest promotions/marketing conferences, the trade-only event attracts major corporate buyers, sales reps, promotion/marketing companies, ad agencies, and others.  Today we see explosive growth of  e-books which is driving market demand, and also see the demise of traditional ‘brick and mortar’ bookstores.

However, before we writeoff the traditional print book market, it is clear to me based on discussions at this event and elsewhere, that print books are supporting many creative marketing and promotion initiatives to create new markets, promote major lines of business, and sell books in large quantities. While we may typically think about print books sold in bookstores, airport kiosks, via Amazon or other mail order channels, the following are some of the marketing and promotion channels I have discussed now being used to support business and sell books:

  • Major bank develops a “Small Business Corporate Library’ to offer selected clients to strengthen their relationship with small business customers and reinforce their brand
  • Pharmaceutical firms integrate nutritional health and wellness programs with one or more selected books
  • Insurance companies use selected ‘branded’ planning/lifestyle texts to create new educational programs for their clients
  • Emergency services (local police and fire) ‘private label’ educational publications for children to provide safety education
  • State governors add ‘tip-in’ pages in a customized version of a business/entrepreneurship or other book to support economic development and attract businesses to the region (“tip-in” pages are custom pages inserted upfront into print books)

All of the above are driven by a basic need – companies want to attract, educate and strengthen relationships with customers. Traditionally, you may have received an imprinted calendar, pen or notepad from your favorite bank, and probably still will, but the above are some of the many new creative and exciting marketing/promotion activities we see emerging now. Given today’s intense global competition, I expect these initiatives to accelerate and others to emerge also linking social media, print books, and e books- we are seeing major new, exciting market opportunities developing here.

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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Boards & Directors 35th Anniversary Edition Features Worm On A Chopstick

Very pleased to announce that the upcoming 35th Anniversary Edition of Boards & Directors magazine will feature Worm On A Chopstick: : Understanding Today’s Entrepreneurial Age: Directions, Strategies, Management Perspectives in its recommended reading section “Book it: Best bets for board reading“.  As you may know, Boards & Directors magazine targets officers and directors of public companies. To see the  review of ‘Chopstick’ and other recommended books, click here Worm On A Chopstick Featured in Directors & Boards 35th Anniversary Issue

I sent many messages to traditional management in ‘Chopstick’ (e.g., innovation management, entrepreneurial thinking, globalization, etc.), but most positive response for the book to date has been from the entrepreneurial sector. I am very appreciative of the recognition of ‘Chopstick’ which is in good company with the other recommended books here.

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