I had the pleasure of being one of about 400 people attending Blueprint Health’s “Demonstration Day.” Angel, venture capital and corporate investors from across the US listened to investment pitches from the nine start-up companies that Blueprint Health selected (out of 300 applicants) for its inaugural accelerator class. I am an advisor to NEEDL, one [...]

Joe Vanden Plas, of Madison’s InBusiness, summarized my keynote address kicking off WTN‘s highly informative FUSION 2012. FUSION is the annual Midwest conference to deepen understanding of the business implications and key success factors associated with new information technology. I’ll blog about what I learned at the conference next seek. For now, read my take [...]

To pick the best vacation spot for hiking in February, I look at climate patterns. In the world of business, external trends help suggest the most attractive market spaces. Arrive before the crowds, and you’ll have the best experience, a principle as true for industry convergence as it is for hiking. Nevertheless, leaders too often [...]

Are investors making a fundamental mistake in using LinkedIn’s market capitalization as a reference point for Facebook’s potential value? Selling consumer ads  (at least twice the market size of B2B ads) to a network over six times LinkedIn’s 135 million members, why shouldn’t Facebook’s value be $100 billion, about twelve times LinkedIn’s $8.4 billion market [...]

Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, global leader of the movement to eradicate breast cancer, learned a painful lesson last week that we should all remember. An organization’s value promise must guide every decision it makes unless it has previously alerted stakeholders to caveats. Your value promise captures the beneficial outcome your organization aims to [...]

How will loyal Apple customers react to Apple’s first public supplier performance report card? Recent news about abuse of labor hours and environmental standards by some of Apple’s Asian supply chain partners might lead the loyal and merely satisfied to shop elsewhere. After all, loyalty, past satisfaction with purchases and implicit expectations about corporate behavior [...]

Want to build a more competitive business model by lowering labor costs? “Why then are you leaving management of healthcare benefit costs to outside health benefits administrators?” John Torinus, Jr. might ask. Torinus, chairman of Wisconsin-based Serigraph Inc. and former business editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, views health insurers as “middlemen with a busted [...]

Competition in a free market economy favors the lowest cost business model as markets mature and price-driven shoppers grow in size. Design a business model that delivers unique benefits, on the other hand, and you must also focus on efficiency. Because customers only pay price premiums for unique benefits, any inefficiency costs come right off [...]

Imagine facing the following situation as the leader of your enterprise. Owing to years of underfunding and neglect, a physical asset that’s a basic driver of your competitiveness and productivity is deteriorating. By not repairing it, you’ve already experienced significant liability costs due to preventable deaths and critical injuries. Experienced engineers have publicly stated the [...]

With venture capital flowing more slowly into the biotechnology sector, the Valley of Death (a period in which start-ups cannot secure additional funding required to remain viable) has become more deadly. Duane Roth, CEO of CONNECT, has a solution. CONNECT is a dynamic San Diego association increasing the number of San Diego start-ups and their [...]