Entrepreneurs: Opportunities from Growing Unemployment
Published July 17, 2009 | 
Team Altman Interesting News:
Entrepreneurs: Sharpen Focus as Increasing Unemployment Creates Opportunities
Entrepreneurs should be aware that as unemployment numbers continue to increase month after month over the next year or two, opportunities are being created as new markets evolve from the demand for new products and services, to solve problems created by global economic conditions throughout the global economy, and so the Entrepreneurs that are focused and able to identify the problems/voids and associated demands, and innovatively develop solutions through knowledge, experience, and sometimes collaboration with other Entrepreneurs, will enjoy success as a result of their entrepreneurial efforts.
The Rest of the Story: http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/17/news/economy/state_unemployment_report/index.htm?postversion=2009071710
Entrepreneurs: Even FREE has Important Value
Published July 16, 2009 | 
Team Altman Interesting News:
A critical concept that every Entrepreneur needs to understand completely and include in their strategies, is the fact that even if you give something away to someone without asking for any money in return, they have already placed a value on the item or information, and that how you present the commodity (i.e. product, information, service, etc.) either increases the perceive value, or lowers it.
Just think, if no one believed there was any value than you would experience poor success in ever giving anything away, and many issues as simple as the time and effort it takes to receive something either adds to, or takes away from the perceived value, a simple but effective concept to remember when designing processes and associated steps customers and website visitors have to go through to reach the final step. The more steps in the process of achievement, the impact is negative on perceived value, and fewer items are given away, and the fewer steps in the process, then the positive impact is greater on perceived value and increased levels of success experienced.
Entrepreneurs need to remember, even when giving away something for free, understanding the presentation and processes for receiving whatever it is, and the impact on perceived value, is critical for reaching the levels of success you want to reach.
The Rest of the Story: http://mashable.com/2009/07/16/free-price/
Entrepreneurs, Technology and Economic Recessions
Published July 11, 2009 | 
The future is always now for Entrepreneurs, and there is one true fact we can state with certainty about today’s market for technology innovations, and the fact is the pace of changing technology resulting from ongoing research and development never slows down and seems to be increase with time and new technological successes resulting in extraordinary changes.
That, and other facts and uncertainties about today’s global economic and market conditions, are why now is the time when as many as half of the global economies’ largest and most successful technology businesses over the next 10 years will be started during the current global recession, and made possible through the vision, innovation, and productivity of Global Entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs never lose touch with their passion for innovation and seem to sharpen their focus even more during slow economic times and downturns in the global economy, and their vigilance is constant as they comb the economic horizons in search of new opportunities in the global marketplace.
Opportunities are created when businesses that continue to operate using old processes and technologies fail to adjust and adapt to the ever changing conditions of the marketplace, and systematic internal failures as a result, create such 
strain on operational capabilities due to unprofitability and its associated negative impact on the critical financial component of cash flow, which is the life blood of business. An old song which continues to be heard over and over again in the marketplace, as one successful business after another gives in to complacency and fails to maintain specific entrepreneurial strategies and principles, thereby losing advantages enjoyed by previously earned strong market positions and spirals into very often fatal market collapse.
It is said and often heard that history repeats itself, a statement never more true than in the global marketplace, and successful Entrepreneurs that don’t lose touch with the fact that their passion for innovations can never recede, constantly remind themselves to maintain focus on their visions of the near future conditions of the marketplace, which includes identifiable and predictable market demands that might not even currently exist, but are sometimes easily created as new innovations in technology and processes are developed, implemented and successfully introduced to the global markets, and by the Entrepreneur’s clear focus on successfully operating with entrepreneurial strategies and principles, the identification of opportunities and development of timely innovations to take advantage of various windows of opportunities in the marketplace, the only history that will repeat itself is the history of entrepreneurial success.
Entrepreneurs are the backbone of the global economy and in times of economic turmoil and recession, it is the entrepreneurial passion, innovation, vision for the future, and willingness to meet challenges and assume risks, that is creating the currently new endeavors that will quickly become successful global enterprises of the near horizon and the future, and for Entrepreneurs the future is always now.
Global Entrepreneurial Strategies 2009 Part 4
Published June 23, 2009 | 
“The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities.”—Michael Gerber
Another strategy focuses on changing economic characteristics, as the strategy itself becomes the innovation, since the product or service the business carries may have been around for quite some time, the strategy converts the old product or service into something new, as it changes the utility value and economic characteristics, while physically there is no change, economically there’s something different and new.
Keep in mind that all strategies that have been discussed have one thing in common, that they each create a customer which has always been the ultimate purpose of a business, and indeed of all economic activity, and they do so in four different ways; by creating utility, by pricing, by adaptation to the customer’s “social and economic reality,” by delivering what represents “true value” to the customer.
Creating “utility” enables customers to do what serves their purpose with the product or service, for example the old idea of a “bridal register” has been adapted by many product manufacturers to allow customers to give what the bride needs instead of what she already has, and thus this innovative opportunity was created and adopted to give customers the utility they needed to accomplish their gift giving, and a vehicle by which the business can focus customer’s buying on it’s specific products only.
Creating “utility through pricing” is another innovation that allows manufacturers and businesses to sell their products, such as, computer printers that are priced very low, so low sometimes it seems they’re being given away, which for all practical purposes they are, since the replacement ink cartridges are priced higher than the original printers, thus the utility is created that sells ink cartridges with higher profit margins, and greater value in the mind the customer.
It is important to remember that customers do not buy a “product,” but “what the product does” for them, and how much the customer pays for each item depends on what the product does for the customer, how it fits his or hers reality, and what the customer sees as “value.”
Now creating “true value” to the customer might seem at times to be the most elusive and difficult task, since it is the customer who ultimately determines the value for services and products, and whatever the customer buys must fit the customer’s realities for value to be established, and the good news is the “better the fit the higher the value.”
The truly successful entrepreneur is one who knows his customer’s realities and the realities of the market that shape and influence the customer’s value systems, can identify changes in the realities that ultimately affect the value customers place on the entrepreneur’s services and products, and quickly make the necessary changes in the services and products to maintain the level of reality fit and value needed for success.
Global Entrepreneurial Strategies 2009 Part 2
Published June 21, 2009 | 
“Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.“–Anita Roddick
One important global entrepreneurial strategy aims at market leadership if not dominance, and is an aggressive strategy from the start, planning to have a permanent leadership position. Before any entrepreneur undertakes this bold strategy they must realize it is the strategy that represents the greatest gamble and there is very little room for mistakes and no room for second chances. It is important to understand completely that everything has to work out correctly for this strategy to succeed, and it requires significant amount of time for thought, careful analysis and preparation of the business plan, and in addition, the strategy demands substantial and continuing efforts to retain a leadership position, or all the work simply creates a market for a competitor to take the position as the leader.
Indeed, many feel like this strategy is so risky that other strategies have been developed as a result of the notion that the leadership strategy will fail more often than it can possibly succeed, which leads us to another important entrepreneurial strategy that takes what has been developed by somebody else, making improvements that create a better product or service than the innovative entrepreneurs that first developed it.
Basically, the concept is to simply let someone else innovate, and then run with their idea and give the consumers of “what they really want” and are “willing to pay for,” and a perfect example of this is IBM creating the PC after Apple created the market with its leadership strategy, and within two years it had taken over from Apple leadership in the personal computer field, becoming the fastest-selling brand and the standard in the market.
The main point here being that IBM chose a much less risky entrepreneurial strategy, and succeeded at it, and although Apple Computer has been a great success, as the original innovator it might have failed to fully understand its success in the beginning.
This type of simple entrepreneurial strategy starts with markets, is both market-focused and market-driven, requires a rapidly growing market, satisfies a demand that already exists rather than having to create one, and is likely to work most effectively in high-tech industries for one very simple reason, and that reason is that high-tech entrepreneurs and innovators are least likely to be market-focused and naturally concentrate on the technology and product.
The strategy of imitation requires a high degree of innovation, as it is not good enough to offer same product or services at a lower cost to the consumer who is “looking for greater innovation” in addition to “competitive pricing.”
Openings in the global markets are created by “habits and mistakes of market leaders” including arrogance of believing that something cannot be any good unless they thought of it first, focusing entirely upon one segment of the market such as the high profit segment and ignoring the volume of the larger market, and the “misunderstanding of quality” which is not what the innovator puts in, but “what the consumer is ultimately willing to pay for.”
A market leader also tends at times to eventually price products and services too high, which is significant because it always results in creating openings for competition, while failing to adapt to different segments of the market as it remains focused on one market segment.