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As an entrepreneur, it’s you against the world. Or, at least that’s how it often feels being a small business owner, especially a solopreneur. Here’s the reality: Success is rarely achieved in isolation. The most successful business people understand that the power of connecting with others is the key to unlocking new opportunities and growth.…..Story continues….
Source: Entrepreneur
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Critics:
Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success suggests that the notion of the self-made man is a myth. Gladwell argues that the success of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates is due to their circumstances, as opposed to their inborn talent. Andrew Likierman, former Dean of London Business School, argues that success is a relative rather than an absolute term: success needs to be measured against stated objectives and against the achievements of relevant peers:
He suggests Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Jack Ma (Alibaba) have been successful in business “because at the time they started there were many companies aspiring to the dominance these two have achieved”. Likierman puts forward four propositions regarding company success and its measurement.
- There is no single definition of “a successful company” and no single measure of “company success”
- Profit and share value cannot be taken directly as measures of company success and require careful interpretation
- Judgement is required when interpreting past and present performance
- “Company success” reflects an interpretation of key factors: it is not a “fact”
The company needs to be aware that it is essential to pull together the team that will be working with the CSFs, its necessary to have employees submit their ideas or give feedback. Never forget to have multiple frameworks to examine the key elements of your long-term goals. Before implementing your company-wide strategic plan with your critical success factors in mind, determine which factors are key in achieving your long-term organizational plan.
The leader needs to be trained and prepared to put the company in the line of success. Some of the skills that can be learned are financial management, marketing sales, and customer service, communication and negotiation, project management and planning, leadership, problem-solving and, lastly, but one of the most important skills, networking.
The company needs to put together all the staffs, all of the giving opinions about what could be better to achieve their goal. The company needs to pay attention in two parts of the communication process: the Initial Launch Communications, which will set the plan to be achieved and the Ongoing Communications, which will be the part where the KSF progress (Contact us is a way to know if the KSF is working well).
To use the CSFs everything needs to be planned, how employees will do it and why. Tools can be used to make planning work faster and easier. A strategy for each department can be planned separately. A good teamwork is the key to success, when all the staff collaborate more ideas and opinions can be discussed to find the best way to achieve success.
A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment which in a specific sequence produce a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a particular customer or customers. Business processes occur at all organizational levels and may or may not be visible to the customers.
A business process may often be visualized (modeled) as a flowchart of a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or as a process matrix of a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on data in the process. The benefits of using business processes include improved customer satisfaction and improved agility for reacting to rapid market change.
There are three elements to a successful platform business model. The toolbox creates connection by making it easy for others to plug into the platform. This infrastructure enables interactions between participants. The magnet creates pull that attracts participants to the platform. For transaction platforms, both producers and consumers must be present to achieve critical mass.
The matchmaker fosters the flow of value by making connections between producers and consumers. Data is at the heart of successful matchmaking, and distinguishes platforms from other business models. Chen (2009) stated that the business model has to take into account the capabilities of Web 2.0, such as collective intelligence, network effects, user-generated content, and the possibility of self-improving systems.
He suggested that the service industry such as the airline, traffic, transportation, hotel, restaurant, information and communications technology and online gaming industries will be able to benefit in adopting business models that take into account the characteristics of Web 2.0. He also emphasized that Business Model 2.0 has to take into account not just the technology effect of Web 2.0 but also the networking effect.
He gave the example of the success story of Amazon in making huge revenues each year by developing an open platform that supports a community of companies that re-use Amazon’s on-demand commerce services.[Jose van Dijck (2013) identifies three main ways that media platforms choose to monetize, which mark a change from traditional business models.
One is the subscription model, in which platforms charge users a small monthly fee in exchange for services. She notes that the model was ill-suited for those “accustomed to free content and services”, leading to a variant, the freemium model. A second method is via advertising. Arguing that traditional advertising is no longer appealing to people used to “user-generated content and social networking”, she states that companies now turn to strategies of customization and personalization in targeted advertising.
Eric K. Clemons (2009) asserts that consumers no longer trust most commercial messages; Van Dijck argues platforms are able to circumvent the issue through personal recommendations from friends or influencers on social media platforms, which can serve as a more subtle form of advertisement. Finally, a third common business model is monetization of data and metadata generated from the use of platforms.
Business model design generally refers to the activity of designing a company’s business model. It is part of the business development and business strategy process and involves design methods. Massa and Tucci (2014) highlighted the difference between crafting a new business model when none is in place, as it is often the case with academic spinoffs and high technology entrepreneurship, and changing an existing business model, such as when the tooling company Hilti shifted from selling its tools to a leasing model.
They suggested that the differences are so profound (for example, lack of resource in the former case and inertia and conflicts with existing configurations and organisational structures in the latter) that it could be worthwhile to adopt different terms for the two.
They suggest business model design to refer to the process of crafting a business model when none is in place and business model reconfiguration for the process of changing an existing business model, also highlighting that the two processes are not mutually exclusive, meaning reconfiguration may involve steps which parallel those of designing a business model.
Business calls for strategy to promote development, innovation
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