This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Here's an alternative model, based on what Charles Handy calls Existential Enterprise, and which I have called New Collaborative Enterprise. Its first two principles turn the business school formula upside down:
Marketing: Don't sell or market anything -- identify and produce something for which there is a substantial unmet need.
Financing: Don't borrow money or sell part ownership in your business -- only spend your own cash or cash you've earned.
This isn't rocket science. The first rule simply says do your research before you start, do it thoroughly, and do it with potential customers. That way you have sales before you have costs. Then rule number two becomes easy -- your customers finance your business, and the debt is quickly extinguished when the product is delivered. This is an oversimplification, of course. You can't always finance operations this way. But if you have to borrow, the principle is the same -- pay it off fast, as part of the same transaction that gave rise to the debt in the first place, and never give up equity -- it's like selling your soul.
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