Business Strategy - Resources for Entrepreneurs - Gaebler Ventures

Good entrepreneurs understand the role of business strategy in growing a business. Here, we discuss numerous business strategies that might work for you. It's a competitive world out there. Make sure your strategies are up to the job of outperforming the competition and helping you to achieve your business goals.

Competing Against Big Companies. Remember David and Goliath? David took on a giant and beat him. You can do the same thing in business, and join a long list of David and Goliath business stories where a small company takes on a big company and emerges victorious.
Creating Strategic Alliances. These days, going it alone as a small business owner is a recipe for a small business disaster. Smart entrepreneurs know that strategic partnerships are the foundation for small business success.

Innovation in Business. Got innovation? For an entrepreneur, it is not enough to offer the same products and services as the competition. Most entrepreneurs thrive on innovation and being one step ahead of the marketplace.
First-to-Market Strategy. The first-to-market fallacy is the misguided belief that being first gives you a competitve advantage in business. Does being first to market ensure that you will dominate the market? Not necessarily. You might find yourself simply paving the way for your competitors.
Avoiding The Commodity Trap. Are you caught in the commodity trap? If many businesses offer exactly what you offer, your offering may be considered by prospective buyers to be a commodity. That means lower prices and a tougher sell. Here are some ways to avoid being perceived as a commodity.
Communicating Your Strategy. You've got a business strategy. Do your employees know what it is? Here's how to make your organization think strategically and help you achieve those ambitious strategic goals.
Fast Growth Challenges. If you are in fast-growth mode, here are five things to watch out for and how you can address them: outgrowing your infrastructure, attracting new competitors, losing talented people, stretching your human capital resources too thin, and diminished customer service.
Reinventing the Game. Looking for good business strategy advice? Every so often a business reinvents an industry and turns the competitive landscape on its head. Do you have the potential to change the game in your industry? It sure beats playing by the existing rules against tough competitors.
Low-Cost Provider Strategy. Does a low-cost provider strategy make sense? Selling cheaper than competitors can be a good way to gain market share. But is it smart? You may gain market share but only at the expense of profitability.
Three Great Books on Business Strategy. Looking for good business books? If you are interested in business strategy, we've found three great business books that should be on the top of your reading list.
Effective Goal Setting. Effective goal setting is essential if you want to see your business strategies succeed. Many great business strategies fail simply because the company was not able to set goals properly.
Growth Strategies. Looking for a business growth strategy that will take you to the next level? Here are four growth strategies you ought to consider.
Product Portfolio Strategies. Cash cows, dogs, question marks, and stars? Oddly enough, these are a valuable classification system that can help you create winning business strategies for your products.
Michael Porter Business Strategies. Want to impress your friends at cocktail parties by talking about business strategies? Explain Michael Porter's strategy model and you'll be the star of the party. Even better, use the strategies to grow your business.
Industry Analysis. The key to defining a business strategy is doing a thorough industry analysis and figuring out where the opportunities are. Here's how to conduct an industry analysis in a way that will help you define the best business strategy.
How to Choose a Strategy Consultant. Hiring a strategy consultant sounds easy. But it's important to make sure you choose a strategy consultant that is right for the job. Here's how to weed through the management consultants and separate the wheat from the chaffe.
When Business Strategies Fail. It takes great courage to acknowledge failure. But when your business strategy isn't working, the best thing you can do is admit failure and take a fresh look at a new approach.
Second to Market Strategy. Businesses that are first to market often lose their lead. Being second to market can still be a winning business strategy if you play your cards right.

Business Strategies That Refuse to Cooperate. It happens time and time again. You lay out the business strategy for the coming year, and it doesn't get executed as planned. Here's why.
Business Strategy Fundamentals. A would-be entrepreneur must always be on the lookout for entrepreneurship opportunities. Here, we discuss business strategies for entrepreneurs, how to maintain a successful business, and ways to help your business survive.
Corporate Level Strategy. We take a look at the corporate business strategies and what entrepreneurs can learn from strategies set by large corporations. Corporate strategies such as growth, stability and retrenchment are very relevant to small business owners and entrepreneurs.
When to Launch Your Product. Mega companies can afford to delay product launches and release endless streams of beta editions. They have deep pockets and can take the punch until they perfect the product. Ideally, a start-up too would wish to perfect its product until they are assured that it can sweep the market off its feet. But there is an implicit cost associated with delay: missed market opportunity.
Extending Your Product Range. There is the perennial temptation to extend the product range to cover everything in the spectrum. Unless you have sufficient resources at your disposal, increasing your service offerings could brush the customers the wrong way.
Sales Growth Trap. Is increased sales always necessary for a business? Learn how constantly increasing sales for your company is not always a good thing.
How to Make Money Giving Things Away. What is freeconomics and why is freeconomics rising? How can your business make money by giving things away for free?
Top Five Fast-Growth Franchises. You may have wondered how some of the most successful businesses got to where they are today. Here we examine the Top 5 fastest-growing franchise companies and how you can learn from their market-leading entrepreneurial endeavors.
Feedback Controls: Analyzing Strategic Decisions. Feedback is an essential means for companies to evaluate the effectiveness of their strategic decisions. Through the use of budgets, ratio analysis, audits, and objectives, companies are able to measure the performance of management, departments, and/or individual business units.
Maintaining Market Leadership. How do market leaders like Wal-Mart and Dell maintain their dominance? They focus on implementing a single strategy more effectively than their competitors, and as market leaders, meet and exceed consumers' expectations. Understanding how they accomplish this gives rival firms a chance to decrease their market shares and dominance.
Strategic Management Models. How do companies create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage? Through a combination of unique resources and stakeholder relations, organizations strive to outperform their competitors.
Theories of Strategy Formulation. Past and current theories in the strategic management field are as varied as the industries they try to guide. These business climates may explain the lack of a universally accepted set of theories. Although numerous methods for companies to approach their strategic development exist, some are more widely used and accepted than others.
SWOT Analysis for Strategic Decision Making. All businesses have goals that involve creating a sustainable competitive advantage over their competitors. This requires companies to develop effective business strategies that exploit their operational advantages over competitors, while minimizing their disadvantages. An effective strategic development procedure that links internal organizational strengths and weaknesses, with external opportunities and threats, is SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis.
TOWS Analysis for Strategic Decision Making. How does a firm decide to pursue one course of action over another? Along with SWOT analysis, TOWS analysis is a process that requires management to think critically of its operations. By identifying several action plans that could improve the company's position, TOWS analysis allows management to choose those strategies that most effectively capitalize on the available opportunities.
Globalization: Emerging Global Markets to Watch. The global marketplace is changing dramatically. The rapid modernization of India and China, which make up for about 37% of the world's population, has created a potentially very large consumer base ready and willing to purchase goods and services. Existing companies and entrepreneurs alike seek how to develop their business in these two countries.
Creating Blue Ocean from Red Ocean. We take a look at Blue Ocean Strategy, a strategic framework developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
Simplicity in Business. Keep it simple, stupid. It's good advice in life, and it's especially good advice for business owners.
Business Expansion. There are many things to ponder when one is trying to expand an existing business. This article is for business owners who have been running a business for some time and are contemplating how to take it to the next level.
Businesses Going Global. Going global is a great option if your small company needs to reach more customers, or if your product is more attractive to a foreign market. Of course, there are positives and negatives to expanding overseas.
Collaboration in the Workplace. As the world becomes smaller, collaboration will be taking place on a grand scale. Learn about how one Toronto-based mining company tore down their secretive walls and reaped benefits from working together with the whole world.
Common Problems with Acquisitions. Growing a business by acquiring other companies is a popular business strategy. However, there are many problems with acquisitions that you'll need to be sure to avoid.
Strategies for Selling to Upper Class American Society. What possesses people to buy a five dollar cup of coffee at Starbucks rather than one for a dollar at McDonalds? Why does one buy a $400 climbing jacket when he or she has no intention of ever summiting Everest?
Partnering with External Stakeholders. Because organizations face increasingly complex and competitive markets, the relations with their external stakeholders become vital. This is part one of a two part series of articles addressing each of the most common stakeholders and how to maximize their satisfaction with the company.
Interacting with Company Stakeholders. Are you making the most of your company's key stakeholders. Ignore them at your own peril. This is part two of a two-part series of articles addressing each of the most common stakeholders and how to maximize their satisfaction with the company.
Political Climate and Strategic Position. Whether you are looking to assess the attractiveness of a new country or considering a strategic evaluation of your current activities, the political climate shall have a significant bearing on your business and therefore, should be appropriately analyzed before reaching any conclusions.
Understanding Your Strategic Position. Organizations are not isolated entities but operate in the context of an external environment. It is therefore imperative to not only evaluate oneself on an absolute scale but more so in relation with what is happening on the exterior.
Michael Porter's Five Forces. According to Wikipedia, Porter's 5 forces analysis is a framework for the industry analysis and business strategy development developed by Michael Porter of Harvard Business School in 1979 . It is helpful in particular to small businesses and startups, because it determines how competitive the market already is and how it would respond to a new brand or product entering it.
Value Proposition and Sony's AIBO. A value proposition is a marketing statement that explains to a consumer the reasons that he or she should purchase a product or service. This often helps galvanize the strategic marketing plan for products of many companies. Such is the case with Sony's AIBO.
Three Levels of Strategy. Strategy in business can be understood to be split into three different levels - Corporate Unit level, Business Unit level and the Operational level, the main difference between them being due to their sphere of influence. A brief introduction to these levels is necessary for estimating the scope of strategy and the power it wields on various business and operational activities.
What is Meant By Strategy?. We all have loosely played around with the term strategy in our daily lives without identifying the key features that are implicitly addressed in our usage. My aim here is to isolate the key aspects of strategy as they pertain to starting and running a business.
Performing an External Analysis. Performing an external analysis is important to the long term competitiveness of your firm. Being cognizant of your environment is advisable for an individual as well as a company. This article discusses the steps necessary to perform a quality external audit.
Analyzing Your Strategic Position. Many small business owners get caught up in the day to day tasks required to run the company. While focusing on internal problems is critical, make sure you take time to analyze your strategic position and external environment. By periodically analyzing your company's strategic situation you can better position your company for long term success.
Learning From Your Competitors. While many small businesses watch their competitors, they don't take the time to learn from them. Believe it or not there is a lot that can be learned from our competition.
Utilizing Academic Resources. Looking for a cost-effective way to utilize outside consulting? Contact your local colleges and universities to access a myriad of resources including students, professors and databases.
Researching Your Industry. By conducting research on your industry and the major players and factors within your industry, you can better prepare your company for long-term success. Many entrepreneurs are hesitant to conduct industry research due to the perceived cost and effort involved. Fortunately, there are inexpensive and effective methods to conduct industry research.
Internet Businesses Require Business Models Too. You know the internet super stars – Amazon, Ebay and Twitter. What makes these internet businesses successful? A business model. Learn from the success of these companies when developing a business model for your new business.
What’s in a Business Strategy?. Your business strategy is the road map that you and your company use to define the actions that you will take to create and sustain economic value for your firm. Not all successful companies have a great strategy, and many firms whom have had a great strategy failed. This article will evaluate how you should approach evaluating and defining your business strategy.
Customer Development Strategy. Customer development, the process of using customer feedback to help you define and develop your product, is an often times overlooked, yet critical business strategy that is an imperative process to include in any product development roadmap.
Characteristics of Successful Online Businesses. There are three core online business strategies that have proven successful since the advent of the internet. This article will review those three business processes and how entrepreneurs can leverage the insight into these processes to execute their own successful online business strategies.
Creating Network Effects. Many businesses are natural networks that benefit greatly from network effects. Even if your business is not a natural network, understanding network effects can help you analyze strategies for creating more durable competitive advantages.
Subsidizing Your Network. Network effects have been a successfully utilized strategy for building durable competitive advantages, but are often the most difficult strategy to successfully implement. Understanding the critical components of building your network will help you achieve stronger network effects in the long run.
Profiting In An Unprofitable Industry. Allegiant Air is a story of an airline that did the impossible by defying the laws and rules of the airline industry and became the most profitable airline in the United States. This article describes how they did it and how you can learn from their processes and practices to profit from the unthinkable.
How To Organize Your Strategic Plan. You know what you want to achieve for your business. The big picture, at least. But putting your objectives in an organized plan will help make the steps you need to take a whole lot clearer.
If Your Business Is Not Doing Well. If your business is not showing the results that you want or expect to see, we suggest some ways you can turn the situation around.
Strategies For Competing Firms. When surrounded by competition, you need a focused strategy to emerge victorious. Here we discuss some strategies that you can adopt.
Deferentiation Strategy Works for Your Business. Often, following what the industry leaders are doing doesn’t get you anywhere. You need to stand out from the crowd. Here, we talk about what the differentiation strategy is about.
What Business Strategy is Not. Finding a durable competitive advantage can be one of the most difficult challenges for any business; however many businesses often try to compete on strategies that in fact are not true business strategies. Understanding what factors are excluded from business strategy will help you and your business avoid these same traps.
How Facebook Pages Boost Customer Interactivity. Facebook launched a feature in 2009 that is designed to help companies reach out to their consumers. Read more to find out how to use this feature to grow your business.
How to Gain Twitter Followers. Every Twitter user wants followers, and finding them is not a difficult task. These tips will help you find a large number of followers for you to keep updated on the status of your business.
Twitter Widgets. Twitter Widgets allow you to display updates on your MySpace, Facebook, and blog, so your followers can see what you’re up to when they are not logged in to Twitter. These customized widgets also make it easy for friends to find your Twitter account while they are viewing your other social network pages.
Low-Cost Leadership Strategy. So you want to compete on price. How do you get your business ready for this? We provide some tips in this article.
Recognize Twitter Followers with Mentions. Mentions are an easy, effective way to communicate with your followers on Twitter. Read more to find out how to mention and how it can benefit your company.
YouTube Automatic Updates. A new feature on YouTube links to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader to post automatic updates each time a new video is uploaded.
Use Blogs to Translate YouTube Videos. Translating your YouTube videos into text can make it more convienient for your subscribers to follow your updates when they do not have access to video.
The Do's and Don'ts for Aspiring YouTube Makeup Artists. YouTube has grown to become a major platform for aspiring makeup artists in the past couple of years. These tips will help you successfully gain and keep your audience.
Use Twitter Trending Topics to Expand Business. Trending Topics on Twitter are great for social networking because they help users keep up to date with the latest news. These tips will help you use them in ways that will efficiently grow your company.
Should You Worry About Early Imitators. Emerging companies often have to deal with larger competitors who take notice of their new venture and imitate their activities as a way to squash any potential threat they may pose. However, if you have the right business strategy, imitation can be flattering, not threatening.
Charge for Your Service or Make it Free?. Digital information along with the internet has forever changed consumer expectation of how we pay (or don’t pay) for digital goods and services. Whether your business is internet based or not, deciding whether to charge for a product or service could be the biggest decision for your business.
Is Your Business Scalable?. Scalability refers to your ability to increase revenues while your marginal costs decrease with each unit sale and is an attractive feature for many business and business owners because of the profit potentials that scalable businesses offers.
Entrepreneurial Vision. Most entrepreneurs are visionaries who can see point B often before they see point A. The future of the business is so clear to them that starting the business is a no brainer, but not knowing how to actually get to point B is an entrepreneur’s double-edged sword.
Customer Acquisition and Product Distribution Strategies. Customer acquisition and distribution channels are vital for a business to succeed, yet many entrepreneurs do not factor these channels into their strategy. The "build it and they will come" mentality has been proven time and time again. Knowing how to build a customer acquisition and distribution channel will help your businesses avoid the trap that others fall victim to.
Deciding On a Business Niche. Decision making is a business. Do you go left or right, up or down? The decisions you make, or don’t make for your business, determine your success. In order to decide on a niche market, it means that you are foregoing other opportunities, or trade-offs, and knowing which trade-offs to make is critical as s business owner.
The Frame Work of Success. Success of a company is based on keeping your business decisions and business strategy focused on one of three core value propositions for your customers. When choosing the activities that you pursue, they should always align with your core value proposition otherwise a firm will find itself losing its ability to maintain its core competitive advantage.
Business Innovation vs. Technological Innovation. When starting a new business, there are two distinct ways to innovate that provide your company the ability to create a sustainable business. Understanding the difference between business and technological innovation and how those innovations are developed and sustained will provide you a clearer roadmap for your start-up.
The Biggest Upsets of All Time. This article evaluates entrepreneurs and businesses that were so disruptive, they changed an industry, removed an established leader, and have become a dominant force in their category because of their successful disruption.
Think Like Your Competitors. Game theory and strategy is a common and popular method for analyzing how firms make strategic decisions. One of the most common strategies addresses how established firms must decide is how to compete against emerging companies and emerging threats.
How Focused Should Your Business Be?. The hardest decision entrepreneurs need to make is deciding what they will not do. Many entrepreneurs and businesses alike tend to spread themselves too thin and lose their core focus that originally made them successful. Knowing how focused you want and need to be can help you draw clearer boundary lines when it comes time to finding growth and expansion strategies for your business.
Competing in Today’s Competitive Markets. Competition today is as fierce as ever as markets become saturated, barriers to enter new markets become lower, access to venture capital becomes easier, and the number of entrepreneurs increases. Studying other competitors in other markets can help you assess what competitive strategies your firm can utilize to help strengthen your competitive advantage.