Innovate or Die!

How to thrive by staying ahead of the marketplace. For small business owners, consultants and other professionals

Michael Van Horn

#19 in the series.

You must keep developing new offerings and marketing strategies to keep up with—and ahead of—your competition. But how does a small business owner, who’s working full-time running the company, carve out time to create and develop new things? Here’s a step-by-step innovation program.

Innovate or Die!

Topics Covered

01

Both threat and opportunity drive innovation.

02

What is innovation? From tweaks to disruption

03

Focus on your Core E—expertise, competency, technology, processes, products

04

How to change the dynamic between you and your managers

05

How to spot opportunities and size up the potential

  1. The Steve Jobs lesson: Say no to 90%.
  2. Balance inner brilliance and passion with outer opportunity.
  3.  
06

Innovative marketing. Everything is changing, but the basics remain the same.

07

Innovative processes and operations. Not sexy, but they sure are lucrative!

08

Pitfalls to innovation. The things that keep you stuck, and how to get past them.

09 

Your innovation action plan

Many consultants and professionals have dealt with this challenge, and have resolved it for growth and profitability. This workbook gives you the tools to work through this for yourself. You won’t just read good ideas, but answer questions to apply them to your business situation—not just read what some “expert” says.

Warm up exercise

From the workbook

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