Archives

Startup statements of intent have a critical role to play if your new venture has a strong social purpose and the startup seeks to change the world for the better, with benefits for all. In [...]

AI For Startup: Artificial Intelligence is talked and written about a great deal, but many of us have little real understanding of what it is and even less, an appreciation of its risks or [...]

Startups Need Data: Many advisers will counsel budding startups to use national economic and market data to plan their new enterprise and be sure of realistic opportunities. This can be good [...]

PEST Analysis: involves the analysis of four external factors that may impact your business: Political, Economic, Social and Technological. It should not be confused with a SWOT Analysis, that [...]

Founders Affinity Diagram: All entrepreneurs that I know are messy thinkers—for good reason. Things happen and you want to act quickly, not least because your data is scrappy and incomplete. You [...]

The Stakeholder Strategy Evaluation Tool facilitates the challenging planning process for purpose-driven startups and entrepreneurs who want their new ventures to contribute to a better world. A [...]

Sales Funnel: simply a way to think about all the steps in the sales process and to be able to log them so that you can avoid a sudden dip in sales. If the sales funnel is not topped up at every [...]

Purpose and Profit Framework: Today, it is finally safe to say that awake and awake business wisdom accords purpose and profit virtually the same weight of importance in planning and leading a [...]

Five Whys Technique: Young kids are often dissatisfied with the first answer you give to their questions, and bug you with a few more, whys? They may have a good reason! The first answer may not [...]

Effective Startup Learning: new ventures need to learn, and they need to learn fast, or they will fail fast. The trouble is that you are already run off your feet. To take time out to [...]

Startup Data Reliability Grid: Good strategic decisions take account of market intelligence and the conclusions we draw from the data. This is especially true in new venture creation, where [...]

Startup Workshops: The best startup workshop that I ever attended was one designed to enable a venture capital company to decide on potential startup investments. Lead entrepreneurs from about a [...]

Vision Statement: Georgetown in Texas, is one of the first US cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants to achieve 100% renewable energy supply—provided by its own power municipal utility. Building [...]

Reducing Risk to Startup Safely: Strategy is tough for entrepreneurs when they love their product so. They just want to get on with it, producing and selling what they’ve got. Let’s [...]

Value Proposition summarizes the reason to buy a product/service, convincing a prospective customer that it will add more value or better solve a problem than the competition. Defining your value [...]

SWOT Analysis: the initials stand for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and provides a simple, but effective means of considering potential decisions before you implement them. [...]

Risk Mitigation Tools: Entrepreneurs that survive tend to be very good at risk mitigation, or considering the downside risks of their actions. Ignorant people tend to describe entrepreneurs as [...]

Mind Mapping uses diagrams to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. They are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify [...]

Marketing Strategy Grid: A marketing strategy integrates an organization’s marketing goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole. I developed this Marketing [...]

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that will measure outcomes against strategies set at the level of the whole venture, a function of it, and even an individual department. You can [...]

Force Field Analysis: Kurt Lewin created a powerful strategic tool used to understand what’s needed for change in both business and personal environments. I have used it many times in both [...]

Eisenhower Method: the method enables you to organize tasks in order to figure out priorities. General Eisenhower is quoted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is [...]

Critical Path Analysis is an algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities. You will not find the Critical Path Analysis methodology here (!), since there are so many ways to tackle the [...]