Tackling big problems may be your startup’s ticket to huge success. Skip the trends and target a problem that’s crying out for a solution.
Minda Zetlin, president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, writes in Inc. that Bain Capital Ventures managing director Ajay Agarwal thinks that tackling big problems should be the goal of any startup looking to make it big.
The smarter giants are promoting a startup mentality with their innovation strategies. Learn how you can, too.
Soren Kaplan, consultant and founder of Leapfrogging Alliance, knows that “big companies get a bad rap when it comes to” innovation strategies. By “applying startup strategies and tools to jump-start innovation,” however, big companies are starting to get their act together.
In this two-part series, Foundry Group managing director and TechStars co-founder Brad Feld shares a list of indispensable insights, skills, and principles no entrepreneur should be without.
Despite any illusions to the contrary, life as an entrepreneur ain’t easy. Launching and successfully scaling a company is one of the most difficult things you can do — it requires a combination of innate skill and instinct, coupled with the ability to apply what in many cases are some extremely hard-earned lessons learned. But while being an entrepreneur often requires blazing new trails, that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
Maintaining your company identity even in the midst of rapid change is important to the success of your products. Find out why.
Riley Gibson, co-founder and CEO of Napkin Labs, knows the importance of maintaining a strong company identity. “After we released our first crowdsourcing product at Napkin Labs,” Gibson writes in Inc., “we immediately started to focus on what we should change and improve about that product.”
In the battle of culture vs. strategy, one manager comes down on the side of culture as a strong foundation to fall back on when strategy fails.
Heather Foeh, Director of Customer Culture at Eloqua, joins Fast Company for their 30 Second MBA video series to discuss the importance of culture vs. strategy.
What’s the difference between a risky, ill-conceived roll of the dice and a bold, stroke-of-genius pivot? Why, success, of course.
Alternatively mocked and romanticized, The Pivot has become a fundamental element of the classic startup narrative. TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah highlights some of the most notable pivots of 2012, and explores “just how powerful (and risky) these moves can be.”
Learn how one company puts culture and people first while scaling and products second.
SEOmoz CEO and co-founder Rand Fishkin offers companies lessons in scaling without sacrificing culture.
Read about three common business mistakes that can hold you and your company back from reaching your true market potential.
Karl Stark and Bill Stewart, co-founders of Avondale, present three common business mistakes in Inc. that have scuttled great ideas and companies in the past. “If you identify the factors that are limiting your business’s success, you may generate new ideas about how to earn a better return,” they write, and list the three “key inhibitors” as unchangeable circumstances, lack of milestones, and a lack of follow-up.
