How about getting out of the box???

Often while running a business one of the biggest frustrations faced by those who head and run it is that they seem to often hit an air pocket with no solution in sight. It could be an issue that is internal like team dynamics, external like unreasonable customers, delayed payments, errant suppliers and confusing market conditions. Or it could be even the bullying behavior of a bigger competitor who is ruthlessly trying to put you down or cut off your supplies. Often in these situations, the frustration is seemingly endless because whatever seemingly logical approach you try (i.e. one that has been attempted before) it seems the issue never goes away.

Key challenges before today’s entrepreneurs

While there has been a clear explosion of opportunities for an entrepreneur today, so have the challenges that they face. In this article, which would be split into two parts, would like to highlight some of those key challenges (by no means exhaustive) that await budding entrepreneurs.

Empty pockets? No hassles as long as you have an idea in it!

There are many, many popular myths about money from a venture point of view, which have been overblown. While to some extent they are true, in an entrepreneurship context, they have become fairly irrelevant over the past decade or so. In the license and industrial era everything was about financial capital – capital to put up plants, to pay license fees etc. etc.

Business writing

The pen aka mouse is still mightier…

In the many things taught and communicated to entrepreneurs, there is one that figures at the bottom if at all it figures – the importance of business writing or communication. A common misconception is that with increasing automation and digitalization, the power of the written and presented word is becoming less and less. How untrue? The reality is that all these advances and technology have only made it more powerful and the process of editing, presenting and archiving the words a lot easier and efficient. Let me outline couple of primary reasons (not all) for this:

Branding is as important if not more for SMEs

Increasing importance of corporate branding for SMEs

Ask most business heads of small and medium organizations about their top priorities and you would be surprised if corporate branding figured in the top 3 or 5 priorities. Majority believe so for the below reasons:

• existing business thinking imparts and exhorts that at the evolutionary stage of an organization, the top priorities are business development, customer satisfaction and managing the cashflows, the rest being add-ons. It further stressed that if one does this right, sooner or later the business will grow to a size at which stage only one needs to seriously look at corporate branding