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Undoubtedly Steve Jobs is inked into history with the greats – Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin and other inventors. But just as much, he also successfully turned around two major businesses and built two from the ground up, which is overshadowed by his product brilliance. How did he do both – he lived his own life and was not afraid of what he believed.

A recent client engagement worked a pivot strategy based on a 5 year product and service launch history. Through mapping services and their resulting characteristics to an adoption quadrant, we were able to clearly see certain trends in market selection, success rates, revenue and profit results which the client had previously not realized. How can this be an eye opener for your business endeavors?

With a significantly reduced cost of doing business, compared to traditional brick and mortar upstarts, the software as a service business has leveraged the “free” model of doing business. Specifically the notion that one can determine if a market exists (and capture that market) by offering something at no cost. While powerful in its ability to create service exposure, this model is also the death knell of startups that miss that “free customers” are not, in fact, customers but rather beneficiaries.

Emergent business initiatives are steeped in continuous learning and discovery. The traditional business plan focuses more on planning with conventional models, where a well defined and executed plan is the key to success. If you’re thinking of writing a business plan, stop and consider from where success may come.

As part of my formal education, root cause analysis was not only taught but also stressed throughout the technical phase of my career. When I began grappling with organizational issues I discovered that the root causes of issues were not necessarily the focal point of decision making. Why does management often forgo root cause analysis? What are the consequences?