Entrepreneurship and Innovation Today

Opportunity Clinic Workshop at OCAD Friday June 19, 2009

Recession-proofing your business, NGO, not-for-profit  for difficult economic times.

Learn how to not just survive, but thrive in a recession.

 Sponsored by the Canadian Innovation Center, Waterloo (www.innovationcenter.ca) 

The Opportunity Clinic© workshop by Walter Derzko  is based on the book-Hard Times Golden Opportunities 45 Great Business Scenarios to Show You How to Profit from Opportunities that Arise in Challenging Times. The workshop profiles the forty-five Opportunity Windows specific to the recession that are presented in detail in the book. These generic  Opportunity Windows, which can be used and applied by any business, not-for-profit, NGO or government are the product of the Opportunity Clinic© which enables entrepreneurs and managers to 1) navigate the uncertainties in economic downturns; 2) use the Clinic’s framework to scan for, design and evaluate emerging new opportunity spaces; and 3) thrive and not just survive in a recession.

The January19th 2009 issue of Business Week states:

“History has shown that crisis breeds opportunity… in times of turmoil, opportunities abound. But taking advantage of them will require [a new mindset], fast reflexes, an aggressive attitude, and serious changes [challenges] to the status quo … bold moves in bad times can pay off big.”

Difficult economic times present challenges, risks and threats for most business owners, and especially science and technology-based enterprises that might have disruptive or unproven technology. Decisions that made sense as little as six months ago may turn disastrous in this climate. Chaos, change and uncertainty may lead to turmoil, but at the same time they present opportunity windows or scenarios for entrepreneurs who are opportunity-sensitive and opportunity-savvy to act on the change.

Date: Friday June 19, 2009; 8:30am to 3:30pm

Location: Ontario College of Art and Design, (OCAD), 100 McCaul  St, Toronto

Cost: $149 plus GST

Online registration:  <http://www.innovationcenter.ca/events/opportunity-clinic-workshop>

Printable form: <http://innovationcenter.ca/files/upload/Opportunity_Clinic_workshop_registration.pdf>

For information: call 416-819-9667

Bio....Walter Derzko, is the founder of The Opportunity Clinic and president of Smart Economy in Toronto. He was Lateral-Thinker-in-Residence, McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, School of  Graduate Studies, University of Toronto, 1990-1994 and the former director of the Idea Lab, Design Exchange, Toronto

Since 2005, he has been blogging on smart technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship, and has lectured and taught at Conestoga College and the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies and, in 2009, at George Brown College and the Master’s Program in Strategic Foresight & Innovation at OCAD. He is a consultant to private-sector companies, technology startups and government agencies and is often called upon for keynote addresses in areas of technology foresight, innovation, research, and future trends

Creativity in Teams and Organizations, call for papers, HICSS-43

HICSS-43 Call for papers for the minitrack on:

“CREATIVITY IN TEAMS AND ORGANIZATIONS”

Part of the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track

of the Forty-Third Annual Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS) Kauai, HI- January 5 - 8, 2010

Papers are invited for the minitrack on "CREATIVITY IN TEAMS AND ORGANIZATIONS" as part of the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Innovation is a critical force in organizational performance and survival. Changes in technology, globalization, and increased competition have all created an environment in which creativity and innovation are needed in order to cope with situational and economic pressures and frequent changes. Designers and Developers of organizational systems must therefore innovate almost continuously to keep the organization aligned with such changes. Creativity is a critical pre-condition for innovation. Generating novel and creative ideas are the key to innovation and growth in every organization today. Providing employees, customers and partners with tools to think creatively has been proven to increase innovation in organizations. Research shows that organizations which have established skill-bases and tools for creativity outperform the competition in terms of revenue, rolling out new products, innovation and growth. Though organizations deploy groups for most creative processes, there has been little research in the area of group creativity. Most creative research is focused on individual factors affecting creativity. Many challenges that arise from pursuing creativity in teams remain unexplored.

This minitrack provides one of the key international platforms on which the following issues can be discussed:

1.       Methods & techniques to improve creativity in co-located and distributed groups

2.       Design and Evaluation of Systems and technology for enhancing creativity

3. Challenges and opportunities for creativity in teams

4.       Theoretical foundations for creativity at individual, group and organizational levels

5.       Practical approaches to foster creativity at individual, group and organizational levels

6. The creation and implementation of innovations in teams and organizations

7.  Factors affecting creativity in teams and organizations

8. Building team-based organizations

9.   Multi-level issues of creativity in teams and organizations

10.                      Research linking individual creativity to group level creativity and organizational level innovation

11.                      Multi-disciplinary approaches to creativity

12.                      Creative collaboration between business partners and customers (e.g. co-creation of products and services)

Thus, papers are welcome that contain original ideas on how to improve creativity and innovation through all phases of problem-solving:  Understanding a problem, devising potential solutions, evaluating alternatives, making choices, making plans, taking action, and after-action review. We seek papers that suggest methodical, technical, theoretical, or practical improvements for realizing creative ideas in the workforce as innovations, for an organization cannot benefit from its creativity until its ideas are implemented.

There are no preferred methodological stances for this minitrack: this minitrack is open to both qualitative and quantitative research, to research from a positivist, interpretivist, or critical perspective, to studies from the lab, from the field, design-oriented or developmental in nature.

Themes and topics of relevance to this minitrack include, but are not limited to (related topics not listed are especially welcome):

Creativity techniques and approaches

·         Creativity methods & techniques to improve creativity in co-located and distributed groups

·         Measuring the effectiveness of creativity techniques and approaches

·         Creativity in patterns of collaboration (divergence, convergence, organization, evaluation, and consensus building)

·         Reusability, trainability, predictability, and transferability of creativity techniques and approaches

·         Capturing best practices on creativity

·         Analyzing the nature of the evolving artifacts

Technologies to support creativity

·         Theories, guidelines, and strategies for designing creative technologies and systems

·         Proof of concepts – examples of breakthrough technologies and systems supporting creativity

·         Technologies that support creativity in specific critical collaboration processes, e.g.

·         Requirements specification & analysis

·         Focus groups

·         Delphi processes

·         Collaborative planning

·         Strategy building

·         Collaborative writing

·         Communities and Web 2.0

·         Mobile Creativity

Creativity in teams and organizations

·         Analyzing the nature of creative teams and its evolving processes

·         Training work group members and work group leaders to think and act creatively

·         Innovation management in collaborative contexts

·         Success factors for diffusing creativity techniques, approaches, and technologies in organizations

·                            Factors affecting creativity in teams, organizations, and value networks

·                            Building team-based organizations

·         Challenges and opportunities for creativity in teams

·         Practical approaches to foster creativity at individual, group and organizational levels

·         Theories on collaborative and organizational creativity

·         Studies on the efficacy of interventions intended to introduce creativity approaches and technologies in an organization

·         Enhancing creativity by appropriate knowledge management

·         Creativity in communities and user-generated content

·         Creativity in the “enterprise 2.0”

·         Creativity in ad-hoc-groups

Theoretical issues in creativity and innovation

·         Theories of creative problem solving

·         Theories of creative decision making

·         Creativity in different socio-cultural environments

·         Effects of organizational culture on creativity

·         Frameworks for evaluating creativity in the field and in the lab

·         Theoretical approaches to understand the effect of individuals, teams, organizations, and the broader environment on creativity

·         Instruments and measurements for creativity and innovation

·         Group tasks to study creativity

·         Theoretical relationships between creativity and organizational productivity

MINITRACK COORDINATORS:

Roni Reiter-Palmon

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Department of Psychology

Director of Research, Center for Collaboration Science

1110 South 67^th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA

Phone: (402) 554-4081 

E-mail: [email protected]

Triparna de Vreede (primary contact)

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Department of Psychology

Research Associate, Center for Collaboration Science
1110 South 67^th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA

Phone: (402) 554-2557

E-mail: [email protected]

Gerhard Schwabe

University of Zurich

Department of Informatics

Chair of Information Management

Binzmühlestrasse 14, CH-8050 Zürich

Tel: +41-44-63-5 43 05

Email: [email protected]

The purpose of HICSS is to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas, research results, development activities, and applications among academicians and practitioners in computer-based systems sciences. The conference consists of tutorials, advanced seminars, presentations of accepted papers, open forum, tasks forces, and plenary and distinguished guest lectures. There is a high degree of interaction and discussion among the conference participants because the conference is conducted in a workshop-like setting.

Instructions for submitting papers:

1.       Submit an electronic copy of the full paper, 10 pages including title page, abstract, references and diagrams using the review system available at the HICSS site, make sure that the authors’ names and affiliation information has been removed to ensure an anonymous review.

2.       Do not submit the paper to more than one minitrack. The paper should contain original material and not be previously published or currently submitted for consideration elsewhere.

3.       Provide the required information to the review system such as title, full name of all authors, and their complete addresses including affiliation(s), telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es).

4.       The first page of the paper should include the title and a (max) 300-word abstract.

DEADLINES:

·         May 15:                    OPTIONAL: Abstracts submitted to Minitrack Chairs for guidance, indication of appropriate content and to receive instructions on submitting full paper.

·         June 15:                   Full papers uploaded in the directory of the appropriate minitrack.

·         August 15:                Notification of accepted papers mailed to authors.

·         September 15:         Accepted manuscripts, camera-ready, uploaded; author(s) must register by this time.

Send all correspondence related to this minitrack to:

Triparna de Vreede

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Department of Psychology

Research Associate, Center for Collaboration Science
1110 South 67^th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA

Phone: (402) 554-2557

E-mail: [email protected]

The Opportunity Clinic- 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 13 of 28 Thirteen Recession wild card scenarios

Most people acknowledge that we are heading into uncharted waters in this recession / depression. Expect unexpected events seems to be the rule of thumb. So how is business supposed to function and plan for the near-term future? One way to reduce uncertainty is the use scenario planning and test “wild card’ assumptions. Here’s one that we offer to clients in the Opportunity Clinic:

 

Recession Wild Card #3 -Second global run on American banks ... What would your business do, if we saw a second global run on American banks?

 

Now just wait a minute? At this point, you are likely asking yourself….”I didn’t hear about the first run on US banks…when did this happen?

I bet 99.999% of North American didn’t hear about this either, unless you are a member of the UScongress or a political news junkie and watching the American  C-Span cable channel all day long. (hat tip to several Smart Economy blog readers from around the globe, who alerted us to this meltdown event, that’s been kept secret from most of the world…) see C-Span video entitled: Rep. Kanjorski: $550 Billion Disappeared in "Electronic Run On the Banks" below.

At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Rep.  Paul Kanjorski from Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told members of  Congress about a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars, back in September 2008." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of just  two hours, before it was halted.

Here is a transcript of what Kanjorski actually confessed  in the video:

”Look…I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked with members of Congress about what’s going on. .  It was about Sept 15 here are the facts and we don’t even talk about these things…. On Thursday  [Sept 15, 2008] at about  11 o’clock in  the morning,  the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA, to the tune of $550 Billion dollars… was being drawn out, in a matter of an hour or two. The treasury opened up its window to help . It pumped $105 billion dollars into the system. …and quickly realized  that they could not stem the tide….we were having an electronic run on the banks…they decided to close the operation....close down the money accounts, and announced a guarantee of $250,000 per account, so there wouldn’t be further panic out there and that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that, their  estimation was that by 2 o’clock that afternoon,  $5 and a half  trillion dollars would been drawn out the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. Now, we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened….. it would have been the end of our economic system and our political system”..

After some deep digging on the net and through various databases, we only found two sources that mention  this "secret financial meltdown, See full C-Span video clip here 

and Kanjorski: We came so close to complete financial collapse

 

Paul Kanjorski, who  serves on the US House Financial Services Committee and chairs its Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises, does not provide further details.

 

Not a hint officially from the US government or the Treasury about this e-run on banks..The only sign that something was wrong, in hindsight we see in the following press release, the day after the bank run:

 

September 16, 2008 HP-1142

Remarks by Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs David H. McCormick at Future  of Consumer Payments Conference

 

Washington

– Good afternoon. Thank you for that kind introduction, Martin. And thanks to you, to Bob and to Ken Chenault for the invitation to be here today. I am pleased to join with you for this conference on "the quiet revolution in money," the implications for our citizens, our economy, and financial system of the dramatic change in consumer payments. I'd like to begin by passing along the regrets of Secretary Paulson who is focused today on market developments and has asked me to speak on his behalf.

 

 

Remember-this was right after the Leahman Brothers and AIG affairs. Who got spooked? who panicked? and who was taking their  money out? The Russians? The Asians? The Gulf Petro-Sates? The Sovereign Wealth Funds? All four? Who had a total of $5 and a half trillion dollars invested in US money market accounts? We may never know for sure.

 

 

Are you shocked yet?  Did you hear about this in the mainstream American or Canadian press? Well, I didn’t either. Just goes to show you that openness and the truth were the  first casualties of this recession / depression.

 

Thirteen Recession wild card Scenarios

“Chance favors the prepared mind said L Pasteur.  

 

So, in the Opportunity Clinic we’ve conceived and  offer 13  “Recession wild card scenarios” that every business person, entrepreneur and entrepreneur want-to-be  should devote some thinking time to,  explore the consequences of  and consider alternative courses of action in advance of the event hitting you.

 

If  “Recession wild card scenario #6” were to happened:

• what early warning signals could I look out for?
• what circumstances could trigger each wild card scenario?
• how do I mitigate its negative impacts?
• how do I identify, cease and leverage the opportunities?
• do I have a “game plan” drawn out in advance, should each of these wild card scenarios come to pass?

Related posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic- 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 13 of 28 Recession wild card scenarios

The Opportunity Clinic- 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 11 of 28 Pretending and Deception as an Opportunity Space

The Opportunity Clinic- 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 10 of 28 "First Impressions” trap

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 9 of 28 The dichotomous thinking trap

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 8 of 28 Industry Architecture Opportunities

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for managing your business in a recession Part 7 of 28  Geopolitical Opportunities;

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for managing your Business in a recession Part 6 of 28 What's in your Recession Playbook?

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 5 of 28 Category Killer Innovation-India's $10 laptop

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 4 of 28 “Left Behind “Opportunities- Go Green & Go Slow

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Pretending and Deception as an Opportunity Space; Part 11 of 28; The Opportunity Clinic © TM 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession

The Opportunity Clinic © TM  28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession

Part 11 of 28 Pretending and Deception as an OpportunitySpace

Harmless white lies and more damaging forms of deception seem to be increasingly more frequent events in society and in the business world, if you follow the business press...[..]… Start-up entrepreneurs are often forced to pretend (to be something they are not yet or to know someone that they don’t to gain customer acceptance and to develop a needed perceived reputation). Deception is not a single point but a continuum along a spectrum. It can range from supposedly “harmless” white lies and deception on one end, where no one is hurt  (see Canadian billionaire example below) to deliberate deception and scams where there are real victims (Think Ponzi schemes and Bernie Madoff, who made off with billions of dollars) . It also surfaces a range of ethical questions, such as.... Under what different circumstances and cultures, will these tactics be more or less acceptable? ….more

http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2009/02/the-opportunity-clinic-28-tactics-for-managing-your-business-in-a-recession-part-10-of-28-pretending.html

 

Please post your replies in the comments section below.

To incorporate the Opportunity Clinic into your class,  business planning process or to arrange for a key note speech for a future meeting, conference or forum, contact us by email

Call for Papers - "Technological Entrepreneurship: Opportunity for High Growth Firms" International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing (IJEV)

Call for Papers - "Technological Entrepreneurship:

Opportunity

for High Growth Firms" International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing (IJEV)

 

Dear Colleagues

 

Please consider the CfP presented below.

 

Good ventures and best regards

 

João Leitão

 

IST,

Technical

University

of

Lisbon

Department of Engineering Management

Av. Rovisco Pais,

1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

 

Ph.: + 351.214.233.585

Fax: + 351.214.233.568

https://fenix.ist.utl.pt/homepage/ist24901

 

 

 

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing (IJEV) - Call for Papers - "Technological Entrepreneurship:

Opportunity

for High Growth Firms"

 

Guest Editors:

Dr. João Leitão,

IST-Technical

University

of

Lisbon

,

Portugal

Dr. Frank Lasch and Dr. Calin Gurau,

GSCM-Montpellier Business School

,

France

 

This special issue spotlights technological entrepreneurship as an opportunity for promoting the development of high growth firms. The principal motivation for SMEs' growth is the search for a minimum scale of efficiency that allows survival. The alternative sources of growth deserve further research, especially the role played by the R&D effort and other categories of intangible assets in explaining the growth of SME's in high-tech industries.

 

As a consequence of the high level of risk associated with innovating activities which could be incompatible with small companies, it is necessary to wait some time for the desired positive effect of R&D expenditure on SMEs' growth to appear. Thus, public policies for fostering high growth firms are needed, given the various needs associated with the greater growth in high tech industries compared to more traditional sectors, as a consequence of a minimum scale of efficiency corresponding to greater size compared to more traditional sectors.

 

The issue will therefore draw attention ways in which technological entrepreneurship is an effective opportunity for contributing to more rapid and efficient growth. The strategic bet on high growth firms should be supported by public policies oriented for reinforcing entrepreneurial growth, in order to overcome recessive scenarios and to reinforce the competitiveness of national economies, on a microeconomic basis. As we acknowledge that technological entrepreneurship is an eclectic topic, papers that address entrepreneurship and growth from multiple levels of analysis are welcome.

 

Subject Coverage

 

Topics of interest to this IJEV focus issue include, but are not limited to:

 

•          Entrepreneurship opportunities in high-tech emerging industries

•          Institutional framework and gazelles

•          Intangible assets and growth in high-tech industries

•          Public policies for fostering high growth firms

•          Regional disparities of high-tech entrepreneurship

•          Serial entrepreneurship in high-tech industries

•          Spin-offs firms and gazelles from universities

•          Survival and growth of innovation and technology based firms

•          Technological entrepreneurship and marketing

•          Technology, innovation and organisational change

  

 

For more information and to submit your paper please visit inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=1017

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 9 of 28 The dichotomous thinking trap

Many novel or even seasoned serial entrepreneurs get struck in what I call the dichotomous thinking trap. The noun dichotomy is defined by Webster’s dictionary as:

1: a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities <the dichotomy between theory and practice> ; also : the process or practice of making such a division <dichotomy of the population into two opposed classes>

2: the phase of the moon or an inferior planet in which half its disk appears illuminated

3 a: bifurcation; ; especially : repeated bifurcation (as of a plant's stem) b: a system of branching in which the main axis forks repeatedly into two branches c: branching of an ancestral line into two equal diverging branches

4: something with seemingly contradictory qualities <it's a dichotomy, this opulent Ritz-style luxury in a place that fronts on a boat harbor — Jean T. Barrett>

Dichotomous thinking is narrow thinking that divides the world, your problems or solutions into only two opposing camps: Yes/No; right/wrong; black/white; Ying / Jang; in-source/ outsource etc. Mainly that’s how the brain works in creating information patterns. Many people don’t even bother to think beyond these self-imposed, artificial, cognitive boundaries to come up with a third, forth or fifth option.

Here’s a case study of one Canadian business that broke free of the dichotomous thinking trap (source:  from the Opportunity Clinic^TM   workshop notes)

 

(continued)

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 9 of 28 The dichotomous thinking trap

Many novel or even seasoned serial entrepreneurs get struck in what I call the dichotomous thinking trap. The noun dichotomy is defined by Webster’s dictionary as:

1: a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities <the dichotomy between theory and practice> ; also : the process or practice of making such a division <dichotomy of the population into two opposed classes>

2: the phase of the moon or an inferior planet in which half its disk appears illuminated

3 a: bifurcation; ; especially : repeated bifurcation (as of a plant's stem) b: a system of branching in which the main axis forks repeatedly into two branches c: branching of an ancestral line into two equal diverging branches

4: something with seemingly contradictory qualities <it's a dichotomy, this opulent Ritz-style luxury in a place that fronts on a boat harbor — Jean T. Barrett>

Dichotomous thinking is narrow thinking that divides the world, your problems or solutions into only two opposing camps: Yes/No; right/wrong; black/white; Ying / Jang; in-source/ outsource etc. Mainly that’s how the brain works in creating information patterns. Many people don’t even bother to think beyond these self-imposed, artificial, cognitive boundaries to come up with a third, forth or fifth option.

Here’s a case study of one Canadian business that broke free of the dichotomous thinking trap (source:  from the Opportunity Clinic^TM   workshop notes)

There’s in-sourcing and outsourcing that most business people consider when they ponder the strategic decision-Do I make things internally or let some else do it? And then they stop thinking at this point, because no other options seem obvious. But what about another angle- I call it “tethered or conditional outsourcing”

"In the late eighties, before the advent of ATM’s and the Internet, a Markham-Ontario based engineering services firm, called  Tertec  had designed a (telephone) networked robotic self standing video tape store system (VideoStar Video Machines) that could not only dispense video tapes, but also take them back ready for rental again, with complete automatic inventory management and a ton of other features that were state-of-the-art back then. 

To produce these video machine kiosks, Tertec had, in the early Nineties a relatively big staff –over 40 people with tools and machinery to process metal, such as lathes, milling machines and the like. This video machine technology business was then sold to a German company called Konzepta GmbH, who also had offices in Calgary, because of their other interests in oil and real estate.   As part of the deal, Tertec built them a plant in Calgary to manufacture these video machine kiosks.

Then they were faced with a problem-the overhead of managing the now-redundant Toronto

mechanical staff, as well as paying them and keeping them busy became a big burden on the firm.  Rather than just lay them off, Tertec tried another creative option-they offered the mechanical staff some of the machines for free, so that they could start their own businesses with the proviso that Tertec would receive priority, if they came to them with jobs and orders.  Some of the more entrepreneurial employees jumped at the chance to start their own spin-off business and agreed to the conditions.  This became a win-win situation for all parties concerned as everybody benefited from the deal. 

The moral of the story:

Rather than laying off people, companies should assist their staff to get jobs elsewhere or help them start their own businesses (with similar conditions that Tertec offered its staff), so that when needed, these people would be ready to help the companies as subcontractors or outsourced workers.  This would mitigate the pain of job losses and enrich the lives of the people as well as benefit the companies in the long run.  As Stelco used to say “Our product is steel but our strength is our people”!

 

Related posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 8 of 28 Industry Architecture Opportunities

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for managing your business in a recession Part 7 of 28  Geopolitical Opportunities;

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for managing your Business in a recession Part 6 of 28 What's in your Recession Playbook?

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 5 of 28 Category Killer Innovation-India's $10 laptop

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 4 of 28 “Left Behind “Opportunities- Go Green & Go Slow

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Related Posts over that past year:

·         Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON

·         Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas

·         Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto

·         Turning Misery into Opportunity

·         Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;

·         How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs

·         Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities

·         Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?

·         Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition

·         Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition

·         The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

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Geopolitical Opportunities; The hypothesis of Economic Warfare

Things are never what they appear to be, especially in geopolitics. Former Forbes writer and business and energy journalist Jim (or James) Norman, who wrote the book- The Oil Card, and blew the whistle on Enron with the SEC, argues that the United States manipulated the price of oil as a kind of economic weapon against countries such as Russia and China, implying that it overtly uses oil as an economic weapon of financial destruction, and that we, the  car drivers and gas consumers in the West are just collateral damage in this economic warfare game. In the futures exchange (NYMEX), an unlimited amount of money from pension funds was used to overwhelm short sellers of crude oil, as a way of running up the price, he explained.

China was hurt by higher oil prices much more than the United States, and has experienced reduced exports, the closing of factories, and massive unreported unemployment, he noted.

The opposite technique, the lowering of oil prices, is currently wrecking the Russian economy, Normansuggested. Russia  has little besides its natural resources, and the softening of the crude market could eventually force regime change there, and in China he said.The real reason America went to war with Iraq was because of China, and it had nothing to do with WMD or terrorism, Norman asserted. As sanctions were lifting in 2003, Saddam was going to cut a deal with China so they could acquire ownership of underground oil fields, and the US sought to prevent this, he said. While the US is propping up India as a foil to China, Russia is now moving in a direction of realigning with China, against the US and Western interests, he added.

Norman

provides some fascinating, logical common sense insights on what could happen next in the global geopolitical space. He gets you thinking about some probable what-if scenarios and what the resulting consequences might be and where the business opportunities might emerge.

For more, See our sister blog Smart Economy for the rest of the item

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for managing your business in a recession Part 7 of 28  Geopolitical Opportunities; The hypothesis of Economic Warfare

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

What's in your Recession Playbook?

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for managing your Business in a recession Part 6 of 28 What's in your Recession Playbook?

Most executives or entrepreneurs that I talk to have elaborate growth strategies  for the upturn in a business cycle but only a single approach in the reverse down leg- CUTS. Be they:  executing layoffs, canceling previously signed contracts, killing product lines or leaning on clients to pay bills faster-they form a narrow mindset. Although necessary in many cases, they are not very creative nor original. In fact, this single-minded mono-strategic approach may be disastrous for your firm.

All baseball, football and basketball teams have set plays in their playbook roster (such as the flea flicker or the "hail mary" in football, or the bunt and double play in baseball) that they practice  religously for unqiue circumstances in a game situation. The sma elogic doesn't tranfer into business for some reason. Funny that CEO practice simulations for problem solving or crisis mitigation (ie, WMD,  SARS or Avian Flu) but they don't spend nearly enough "thinking time" for opportunity spotting or opportunity design.

From the jargon in our Opportunity Clinic © ™ workshop, your Recession Playbook requires six sets of strategies and not just one.

1. coping or surviving strategies for the down leg of a recession,
2. coping or surviving strategies for the bottom of a recession, (it may stretch out to be a long one)
3. opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the down leg of a recession,
4. opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the bottom of a recession,
5. opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the up leg of a recovery, and
6. a cluster of "Hail Mary" strategies in case all bets are off and we head into an honest to goodness depression

The above opportunity windows will vary depending on what the bottom looks like and the depth and breadth of the economic fall. As I've commented on this blog before, we could be facing a v-shaped bottom, a V-shaped bottom, a W-shaped bottom, a vW-shaped bottom, and L-shaped flat bottom or and extended L-shaped flat bottom. The Opportunity Clinic has over 300 generic Opportunity Scenarios or Windows that executives can use as templates to explore or design new "opportunity spaces" for their business to not just survive but thrive in a recession.

Newsweek supports this notion, writing this week:

 

“In theory, every manager should have the skills needed to guide companies through a recession, the way every baseball player is supposed to know how to bunt or steal a base.” …[but most don't]…"After spending their careers in single-minded pursuit of growth, business leaders have to adjust their mentality,"…[…]… "The new reality is that, barring acquisitions, [the average] company will be smaller two years from now than it is today."

If you are interested in extending your Recession Playbook, call us or email us (by clicking on my name in the signature below) to get more information about the Opportunity Clinic © ™.

Related posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for managing your Business in a recession Part 6 of 28 What's in your Recession Playbook?

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 5 of 28 Category Killer Innovation-India's $10 laptop

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 4 of 28 “Left Behind “Opportunities- Go Green & Go Slow

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Related Posts over that past year:

·         Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON

·         Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas

·         Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto

·         Turning Misery into Opportunity

·         Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;

·         How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs

·         Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities

·         Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?

·         Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition

·         Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition

·         The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Most executives or entrepreneurs that I talk to have elaborate growth strategies  for the upturn in a business cycle but only a single approach in the reverse down leg- CUTS. Be they:  executing layoffs, canceling previously signed contracts, killing product lines or leaning on clients to pay bills faster-they form a narrow mindset. Although necessary in many cases, they are not very creative nor original. In fact, this single-minded mono-strategic approach may be disastrous for your firm.

All baseball, football and basketball teams have set plays in their playbook roster (such as the flea flicker or the "hail mary" in football, or the bunt and double play in baseball) that they practice  religously for unqiue circumstances in a game situation. The sma elogic doesn't tranfer into business for some reason. Funny that CEO practice simulations for problem solving or crisis mitigation (ie, WMD,  SARS or Avian Flu) but they don't spend nearly enough "thinking time" for opportunity spotting or opportunity design.

From the jargon in our Opportunity Clinic © ™ workshop, your Recession Playbook requires six sets of strategies and not just one.

1. coping or surviving strategies for the down leg of a recession,
2. coping or surviving strategies for the bottom of a recession, (it may stretch out to be a long one)
3. opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the down leg of a recession,
4. opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the bottom of a recession,
5. opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the up leg of a recovery, and
6. a cluster of "Hail Mary" strategies in case all bets are off and we head into an honest to goodness depression

The above opportunity windows will vary depending on what the bottom looks like and the depth and breadth of the economic fall. As I've commented on this blog before, we could be facing a v-shaped bottom, a V-shaped bottom, a W-shaped bottom, a vW-shaped bottom, and L-shaped flat bottom or and extended L-shaped flat bottom. The Opportunity Clinic has over 300 generic Opportunity Scenarios or Windows that executives can use as templates to explore or design new "opportunity spaces" for their business to not just survive but thrive in a recession.

Newsweek supports this notion, writing this week:

 

“In theory, every manager should have the skills needed to guide companies through a recession, the way every baseball player is supposed to know how to bunt or steal a base.” …[but most don't]…"After spending their careers in single-minded pursuit of growth, business leaders have to adjust their mentality,"…[…]… "The new reality is that, barring acquisitions, [the average] company will be smaller two years from now than it is today."

If you are interested in extending your Recession Playbook, call us or email us (by clicking on my name in the signature below) to get more information about the Opportunity Clinic © ™.

Related posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for managing your Business in a recession Part 6 of 28 What's in your Recession Playbook?

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 5 of 28 Category Killer Innovation-India's $10 laptop

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 4 of 28 “Left Behind “Opportunities- Go Green & Go Slow

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Related Posts over that past year:

·         Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON

·         Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas

·         Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto

·         Turning Misery into Opportunity

·         Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;

·         How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs

·         Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities

·         Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?

·         Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition

·         Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition

·         The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 4 of 28 “Left Behind “Opportunities

 

 

Every human concept or invention has 4 effects on society, according to Marshall McLuhan. As we switch from plastic bags to bring-your-own cloth bags in grocery stores, we see one of these unintended effects or consequences. It’s what I would classify as a “left behind” combined with a  "process" opportunity window, in the Opportunity Clinic ™ ©  jargon. I'm less of a "trends" fan, althought this does present another "opportunity window" because trends such as a shift from plastic to bring-it-yourself (biy) bags are ovbious to most people and the opportunity space gets quickly crowded out.

My good friend Susan Abbott writes about this unintended consequence of the switch in bags on her blog

What happened when everyone started bringing their own bag: the law of unintended consequences

"I just got a call from a good buddy leaving Loblaws, which recently introduced a save-the-planet charge of 5 cents a bag for those no-goodniks that don't bring their own.

"I'm just leaving the Superstore now," says buddy."Everyone is bringing their own bags.

"And you would not believe how this has slowed down the checkout process. At least 30% slower."

I witnessed this myself at a Wal-Mart. The bags are not all the same size. Some are floppy and need to be held open. One guy was handing the bags over one at a time.

Last week when I commented about the cost of human-delivered services, I wasn't even thinking about this.

Researchers like me know how much customers hate waiting in line. They hate watching inefficiency in line. It used to be just the brown rice brotherhood that took their own bag. Soon everyone will be doing it.  Yikes! "

These are touch-points for the opportunity savvy entrepreneur that can 1) recognize this change event or shift and notice the unintended consequences ..they are usually in your face if you only take the time to look and ask a few strategic questions and 2) find and fill an opportunity space or opportunity window here with your unique solution.

Here's a freebee for someone..... design a cloth bag holder for your store-bought cloth bags, so that the checkout clerk can scan and pack groceries right away into your cloth bag, (but not for bags from the competion's store).

Related posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Related Posts over that past year:

·         Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON

·         Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas

·         Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto

·         Turning Misery into Opportunity

·         Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;

·         How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs

·         Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities

·         Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?

·         Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition

·         Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition

·         The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002

Walter Derzko

 

Every human concept or invention has 4 effects on society, according to Marshall McLuhan. As we switch from plastic bags to bring-your-own cloth bags in grocery stores, we see one of these unintended effects or consequences. It’s what I would classify as a “left behind” combined with a  "process" opportunity window, in the Opportunity Clinic ™ ©  jargon. I'm less of a "trends" fan, althought this does present another "opportunity window" because trends such as a shift from plastic to bring-it-yourself (biy) bags are ovbious to most people and the opportunity space gets quickly crowded out.

My good friend Susan Abbott writes about this unintended consequence of the switch in bags on her blog

What happened when everyone started bringing their own bag: the law of unintended consequences

"I just got a call from a good buddy leaving Loblaws, which recently introduced a save-the-planet charge of 5 cents a bag for those no-goodniks that don't bring their own.

"I'm just leaving the Superstore now," says buddy."Everyone is bringing their own bags.

"And you would not believe how this has slowed down the checkout process. At least 30% slower."

I witnessed this myself at a Wal-Mart. The bags are not all the same size. Some are floppy and need to be held open. One guy was handing the bags over one at a time.

Last week when I commented about the cost of human-delivered services, I wasn't even thinking about this.

Researchers like me know how much customers hate waiting in line. They hate watching inefficiency in line. It used to be just the brown rice brotherhood that took their own bag. Soon everyone will be doing it.  Yikes! "

These are touch-points for the opportunity savvy entrepreneur that can 1) recognize this change event or shift and notice the unintended consequences ..they are usually in your face if you only take the time to look and ask a few strategic questions and 2) find and fill an opportunity space or opportunity window here with your unique solution.

Here's a freebee for someone..... design a cloth bag holder for your store-bought cloth bags, so that the checkout clerk can scan and pack groceries right away into your cloth bag, (but not for bags from the competion's store).

Related posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Related Posts over that past year:

·         Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON

·         Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas

·         Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto

·         Turning Misery into Opportunity

·         Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;

·         How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs

·         Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities

·         Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?

·         Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition

·         Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition

·         The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002

Walter Derzko