Entrepreneurs need 
to learn new traditional management skills to improve their ability to both attract funding and succeed. That is the message I delivered in a local TV interview discussing #entrepreneurship in Northern Virginia. The region is now called “Silicon Valley East” based on the surge of entrepreneurial ventures in the area. Read More
Good tip for summer vacation time – check out famous Italian architect’s tips for building the perfect sandcastle … analysis, planning, design, execution, observe, evaluate, make adjustments- sounds like what #entrepreneurs do when launching a new #venture. And many do not have much more than sand to work with when they start
Check out http://tinyurl.com/o6c6jge
Enjoy your summer vacation ..
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.
Commented on excellent Richard Branson TED talk How To Hack Into Happiness good messages 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.
Most entrepreneurs are familiar with the story of Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb. To outsiders, looks like a waste of time and effort- we see about 10,000 failures and one success. Thomas Edison saw it differently in his widely quoted views on success and failure: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
I agree with Thomas Edison and always define failures as “Learning Experiences” — this works for me.
I recommend checking out “Failing Forward — 3 Tips for Failing Your Way to Success” – an excellent perspective on success and failure from Marshall Graham, Managing Partner at Indian River Advisor, LLC. Excellent insights here for all entrepreneurs.
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.
The Australian newspaper had an interesting article on June 25, 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/mtah9ju) describing a number of successful predictive analytics applications, but also making the point that market penetration has been slow noting “… despite the numerous uses of predictive analytics, uptake is limited. According to Gartner, only 13 per cent of organisations report extensive use, while fewer than 3 per cent use prescriptive capabilities such as decision/mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation market”. I posted brief summary comments today in response to the article and am pleased to share a complete copy of my comments:
Excellent article and clearly summarizes the challenges we face in educating management on how PA solutions can help companies improve performance and mitigate risk. I am pleased to share the following 3 observations. My comments are based on my position as former CEO of InferX Corporation, a publicly traded predictive analytics company, and serving as adjunct professor teaching MBA strategy courses in the RH Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
No. 1 Analytics complements ‘traditional management’
Define your mission; assess external environment and competition using PEST, Porter’s 5 Forces model, other tools; assess internal resources and capabilities; develop detailed value chain analysis; analyze product life cycles; develop cost leader/differentiation global strategies based on product, market, competition and other factors. Analytics can make a major contribution throughout the ‘traditional’ management process. Yet market analysis shows about 85% of the total PA market today addresses the CRM sector. We need to view PA within the context of traditional management rather than a separate ‘big data/analytics’ sector. Integrating PA into traditional management processes is a challenge and the real opportunity with high upside
No. 2 Analytics costs more
True. When the e-commerce revolution emerged years ago, we had major push back from companies who preferred to continue to process orders manually, work with suppliers using ad hoc systems, and avoid ‘costly’ new systems implementation and industry standards. Systems costs did increase, but we created process and performance efficiencies that improved profitability and reduced risk. Today’s analytics solutions demand understanding ROI (and how to measure) and clearly communicating this message.
No. 3 “Analytics Drives Strategy and Strategy Drives Analytics”
Properly executed and integrated into a company’s management processes, I see great opportunity to use analytics to drive strategy, particularly in shaping new product and market innovations to increase ROI. Look at Capital One, an analytics driven competitor reportedly doing 300+ analytic scenarios daily to optimize financial offerings. Or Progressive, capturing motorcycle rider clients using analytics to define a segment with both claims and expense ratios providing strong returns. Amazon, Netflix and many others are using analytics to drive ‘micro-marketing segmentation’ which is where we are heading. And these new strategies create new analytics, enabling analytics- savvy companies such as Amazon to continue to excel.
Clearly all ‘analytics solutions’ providers, a term I prefer to emphasize PA’s broader role, have a challenge ahead- to educate clients, particularly at the ‘C’ level, on the opportunities embracing these solutions and the challenges they will face if they do not. Exciting times lie ahead in the global analytics solutions business for both solutions providers and all companies in all sectors.
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.
The Australian newspaper had an interesting article on June 25, 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/mtah9ju) describing a number of successful predictive analytics applications, but also making the point that market penetration has been slow noting “… despite the numerous uses of predictive analytics, uptake is limited. According to Gartner, only 13 per cent of organisations report extensive use, while fewer than 3 per cent use prescriptive capabilities such as decision/mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation market”. I posted brief summary comments today in response to the article and am pleased to share a complete copy of my comments:
Excellent article and clearly summarizes the challenges we face in educating management on how PA solutions can help companies improve performance and mitigate risk. I am pleased to share the following 3 observations. My comments are based on my position as CEO of InferX Corporation, a publicly traded predictive analytics company, and serving as adjunct professor teaching MBA strategy courses in the RH Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
No. 1 Analytics complements ‘traditional management’
Define your mission; assess external environment and competition using PEST, Porter’s 5 Forces model, other tools; assess internal resources and capabilities; develop detailed value chain analysis; analyze product life cycles; develop cost leader/differentiation global strategies based on product, market, competition and other factors. Analytics can make a major contribution throughout the ‘traditional’ management process. Yet market analysis shows about 85% of the total PA market today addresses the CRM sector. We need to view PA within the context of traditional management rather than a separate ‘big data/analytics’ sector. Integrating PA into traditional management processes is a challenge and the real opportunity with high upside
No. 2 Analytics costs more
True. When the e-commerce revolution emerged years ago, we had major push back from companies who preferred to continue to process orders manually, work with suppliers using ad hoc systems, and avoid ‘costly’ new systems implementation and industry standards. Systems costs did increase, but we created process and performance efficiencies that improved profitability and reduced risk. Today’s analytics solutions demand understanding ROI (and how to measure) and clearly communicating this message.
No. 3 “Analytics Drives Strategy and Strategy Drives Analytics”
Properly executed and integrated into a company’s management processes, I see great opportunity to use analytics to drive strategy, particularly in shaping new product and market innovations to increase ROI. Look at Capital One, an analytics driven competitor reportedly doing 300+ analytic scenarios daily to optimize financial offerings. Or Progressive, capturing motorcycle rider clients using analytics to define a segment with both claims and expense ratios providing strong returns. Amazon, Netflix and many others are using analytics to drive ‘micro-marketing segmentation’ which is where we are heading. And these new strategies create new analytics, enabling analytics- savvy companies such as Amazon to continue to excel.
Clearly all ‘analytics solutions’ providers, a term I prefer to emphasize PA’s broader role, have a challenge ahead- to educate clients, particularly at the ‘C’ level, on the opportunities embracing these solutions and the challenges they will face if they do not. Exciting times lie ahead in the global analytics solutions business for both solutions providers and all companies in all sectors.
Paul B. Silverman
President and CEO
InferX Corporation (OTC/PK: NFRX)
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.
HBR Taps Data Scientist as the Sexiest Job of the CenturyHere is an interesting post from the Spitfire Business Intelligence blog about a recent HBR article “The award is the business world’s equivalent of People Magazine’s annual Sexiest Man Alive designation.But who could ever have imagined that the nod would go to the data scientist, a role pioneered by the world’s Web behemoths and now being sought after by mainstream companies seeking to gain actionable business insight from sifting through large volumes of data?” http://spotfire.tibco.com/blog/?p=14455
Click on the above link to read the complete post and you may also want to access the HBR article which I think most will find interesting. These are the same messages I and many others are making about analytics and its ability to dramatically reshape and improve current business processes, create more efficient operations, and drive significant new product development and other high potential revenue opportunities. The role of creative, powerful analytics is also reshaping our traditional perspectives on industry analysis and strategy development which are being integrated into traditional business management programs. And new career and business opportunities are emerging from all sectors in many diverse organizations, and I foresee these accelerating. We should keep in mind analytics are still in early stage of development and deployment, and today’s management is only beginning to understand how these techniques add real value and competitive edge.You can be sure exciting and challenging times lie ahead in the analytics arena.
Paul B. Silverman |
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I see the new ‘data intensity’ business model getting traction in new sectors and creative applications are emerging. Check out Stylitics, a new analytics platform to help manage your wardrobe.
http://mashable.com/2012/02/03/stylitics/
Note the reference to linking branding, couponing and so on. Most importantly, note the clear reference to Mint.com which I and many others view as a “flagship” data intensity business model.
Working with Sante Corporation, a new healthcare/analytics venture, it is clear to me providers can add high value to consumers through next generation analytics, carefully crafted to deliver insights to consumers and provide significant public benefit. The key points here – information aggregation and retrieval are yesterday’s business and commoditizing. Real opportunity now is going deeper, developing “data intensity” models, identifying the “unknown unknowns” providing real value, using powerful, creative predictive analytics to create sustainable value, and developing high value partnerships using electronic couponing, machine readable packaging and other new tools to deliver real value to consumers and create exponential shareholder value growth.
Given Mint.com’s successful business strategy, we can expect to see the data intensity business model trend accelerating. Very exciting developments are coming in this high potential market space.
Paul B. Silverman
Author: Worm on a Chopstick : Understanding Today’s Entrepreneurial Age: Directions, Strategies, Management Perspectives https://paulbsilverman.com/books/
Chief Executive Officer
Sante Corporation
Creating Next Generation Personalized, Simple Solutions to Improve Personal Health Management
Email: paul@paulbsilverman.com
Linked in: Paul Silverman
Twitter: globalbizmentor
As we all know, the digital photography revolution impacted the traditional film market. which in 2000, accounted for 60 percent of Fujifilm profits.. The film market went to basically nothing, but Fujifilm found new revenue sources and thrived. Kodak was the global leader in the traditional film market but did not survive the technology disruption.
Why?
A recent Economist article www.economist.com/node/21542796 provides excellent insights on strategies both established firms pursued in response to changes in the film market. There are also many lessons we can learn here which I believe help entrepreneurial firms seeking to identify and pursue new opportunities in highly competitive, changing, uncertain, high risk markets. Here are three insights that I believe are particularly helpful:
• When Traditional Markets Change Dramatically, New Opportunities Emerge: Think Out of the Box (or ‘room’ as I noted in my recent book) To Create Winning Strategies
Look at how Fujifilm responded to the demise of the film market. Developed new products (cosmetics, others) leveraging competencies in chemicals and technology; Created film technology for displays, among other ideas. These new directions also create opportunities for agile entrepreneurial firms who embrace a similar
strategic vision, understand where technologies and markets are heading, understand where and how business processes can be adapted to create value and competitive position. What this also implies are new alliance opportunities at all levels including technology, distribution, marketing reach and so on. The starting point is to “think strategically’ which is an entrepreneurial survival skill in today’s dynamic, global marketplace. Strategy planning matters, and it is a critical entrepreneurial skill worth honing.
• Avoid the ‘Paralysis By Analysis’ Problem
Kodak was hampered by slow reaction to rapidly changing market and technology shifts. As noted, Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School suggested that Kodak executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high- tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it.” The message here for entrepreneurial firm managers? Obviously have to balance this with some analysis, but it often “Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission” to successfully pursue new business directions.
• Disruptive Technology Innovation Always Occurred and Always Will, Only Faster
To see the traditional film market disrupted is really no surprise. Every sector is changing, and many are disappearing due to tsunami- like technology shifts. We can discuss how long market shifts will take, what new sectors will emerge, who will be
competitors and so on, but the key point is almost all markets will change due to technology disruption . So it is really no surprise to see the demise of Kodak and many others (e.g., minicomputer manufacturers, large copier companies, Borders, record stores, others) who either did not fully embrace these radical changes, did not want to “disturb” their current business, or thought their businesses would exist forever. And these changes mean opportunity for agile entrepreneurial firms that understand
the changing competitive dynamics and develop well crafted strategies.
Paul B. Silverman
Author: Worm on a Chopstick : Understanding Today’s Entrepreneurial Age: Directions, Strategies, Management Perspectives https://paulbsilverman.com/books/
Email: paul@paulbsilverman.com
blog: https://paulbsilverman.com/blog/
Linked in: Paul Silverman
Twitter: globalbizmentor
The online advertising market is estimated at more than $30 billion in 2011 growing at 22 percent annually based on Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) statistics. What we are seeing is explosive growth of predictive-analytics based tools and applications to drive the creation of new targeted ad services.
Look over today’s announcement http://tinyurl.com/7tmmvsp that predictive analytics firm eBureau is spinning off its online advertising targeting business into a new company called TruSignal(TM) offering targeted advertising using proprietary predictive analytics and other tools.
All companies are interested in finding what we call the ‘significant few among the trivial many’ – I foresee many exciting developments and issues emerging here as we pursue this goal:
Always important to look at how major companies respond to these changes (think response of Barnes & Noble vs Borders to the e-book revolution). How does a major ad firm, well entrenched in traditional print, TV, radio media, address these new trends- most are obviously committed to the social media revolution but new predictive analytics tools are changing the rules of the game, helping ‘find the significant few among the trivial many’ in ways not possible today.
As these services accelerate, and they will, I expect to see major firms ramp up internal efforts to develop competitive analytics services organically. These powerful services are evolving very quickly and I expect to see major industry leaders seeking alliances with creative innovation leaders in the predictive analytics market.
Paul B. Silverman is a Lecturer in the Robert H. Smith School of Business in the University of Maryland. He also serves as CEO of Sante Corporation, an early stage personal health care management company, and Managing Partner of Gemini Business Group, a new venture development and advisory services firm. He can be reached at paul@paulbsilverman.com or via Twitter at @globalbizmentor
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.
