Apr 12, 2010 - By Kate Lister
Take a lesson about business growth from one of the world's richest entrepreneurs: "I don't try to jump over seven-foot bars; I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over." —Warren Buffet In 1957, Igor Ansoff, a Russian-American with a PhD in applied mathematics, developed a model that has served as the foundation to corporate growth strategies for more than five decades. Called the The principal of the model is simple. It's cheap, easy, and safe to sell stuff that people already want to people you already know. It's expensive, hard, and risky to blaze new trails with new products or services in unknown markets. In between is, well, in between. While something of a hybrid between Ansoff's and Buffet's advice, here's a summary of growth strategies from the least to most risky. Sell More Stuff to Existing Customers The easiest, cheapest, safest way to grow your business is to sell more stuff to existing customers because both are known quantities. Here's how:
This involves grabbing market share by wooing customers away from competitors. It introduces some risk because you're dealing with new faces, but a long as you don't venture into new markets, they should be similar to your existing customers. Here's how:
In this approach, you expand your product mix with market-proven products and sell them to existing customers. Here's how:
To wring more sales out of your existing customer base, you can also grow by developing related products. Obviously, this is riskier than adding known products or services because it carries product development risks. Here's how:
While you might make a case that the product development element of the last strategy carries more risk than moving into new markets, most experts agree that selling to existing markets is far less risky than selling to new ones where you have no experience. Here's how:
This is the highest risk, highest cost approach to growth because it suffers from both product and market risks. In the case of growth through acquisition, as is often the strategy, it also introduces a variety of financial, cultural, and management risks. It's not a good place for the weak of budget or nerve. Remember, the pioneers were the ones full of arrows. Here are some examples:
If you want to grow smart, let the big boys spend the time and money to hoist their mass over the high bar while you step lightly over the low hurdles. Over the past thirty years, Kate Lister has owned and operated several successful businesses and arranged financing for hundreds of others. She’s co-authored three business books including
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Think you can cook? Professional chefs, amateur home cooks, culinary school grads and foodies…show off your cooking skills by entering Hot Chef Challenge 2010 at the National Restaurant Association’s NRA Show 2010, held May 22-25 in Chicago.
Submit a 2-minute (or less) video on YouTubeTMby April 29 demonstrating their original recipe using fresh produce as a key ingredient — for a chance to cook alongside celebrity chef and Bravo TV’s Top Chef Masters 2 contender Marcus Samuelsson in the World Culinary Showcase on Saturday, May 22 at NRA Show 2010. The winner will also receive accommodations at Affinia Hotel Chicago and a special dinner for two at Chef Samuelsson’s C-House restaurant, and the winning recipe and photo will be included in American Airlines American Way magazine. What are you waiting for? Get cooking! How to enter Submit your video on YouTube. Create a 2-minute (or less) video preparing an original recipe and upload it to the Hot Chef Challenge YouTube site. More information NEW YORK—The Sapir Organization and the Bayrock Group will unveil their 46-story Trump SoHo condo-hotel here tomorrow.
Trump International Hotels helped develop and will manage the hotel, which features a restaurant and lounge, full-service spa, and 12,000 square feet of meeting space. Reportedly, only 30% of the condo units have gone to contract due to the difficult economy and financing environment. BETHESDA, MD—Marriott International's JW Marriott brand will add 10 new hotels to its portfolio this year.
Among the new hotels are properties in Miami, San Antonio, Los Angeles and Chicago. On a global scale, the brand also will add properties in Hangzhou, China; Bogota, Colombia; Ankara, Turkey; and three hotels in India. An additional 20 JW Marriott's are in development or under construction in 13 countries, including The Maldives; Vietnam and Puerto Rico. DANA POINT, CA —Private real estate investment company Washington Holdings has acquired the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort here from an affiliate of Citigroup, Inc..
Washington Holdings, which invests in well positioned commercial real estate assets in the Western United States and currently holds both debt and equity interests in hotel properties representing more than 10,000 hotel rooms, purchased Citigroup's remaining equity interest in the luxury seaside resort. Opened in 2001, the oceanfront hotel features 400 guestrooms and suites, an 18-hole Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed championship golf course, 65,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space, restaurants and the 30,000 square foot Spa Gaucin. Johnny So serves as general manager. The resort is managed by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. SAN FRANCISCO—The W San Francisco hotel here has now attained Silver-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. According to the hotel’s manager, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, the property is the first existing hotel belonging to a major brand that has attained the certification.
In total, seven existing hotels across the U.S. have attained the Silver LEED ranking. The W San Francisco’s LEED attributes include the facts that 70% of its guestroom lighting and 90% of its back-of-the-house lighting is energy efficient by using compact fluorescent lighting and LED bulbs as well as motion sensors, among other technologies; the new HVAC cooling towers save 300 kilowatts per year; motion sensors power off the HVAC system in unoccupied guestrooms; and there are Energy Star power management features on all of the hotel’s PCs. The hotel is also now considering installing wind turbines on its roof, which would be a first for a commercial building in San Francisco. Furthermore, all food and beverage served for meetings at the W San Francisco is organic, biodynamic and local. ATLANTA—During the first quarter of 2010, America's Best Franchising, Inc. sold 13 new hotel franchises and opened 14 new properties.
Among the new hotels are America's Best Inns & Suites in Kankakee, IL; Caseyville, IL; Besserman City, NC; Modesto, CA; Pompano Beach, FL; Phoenix, OR; Parowan, UT and Yimu, China. The company's Budgetel Inns & Suites brand also added new properties in Yimu, China; Watersboro, SC; Lithonia, GA; and San Antonio, TX. America's Best Franchising plans to sell and open between 45 and 55 properties this year. Eric Paraskevas of terra and Mackenzie Hilton of Mercato are appearing on Chopped tonight at 10pm. You can ROOT on Hilton at a viewing party at Valanni starting at 9:30. There will be ROOT cocktails to help you cheer on the chef in the private dining room in the back.
Paraskevas will be busy at terra where he’s hosting a Victory Beer Dinner The dinner features 5-courses and 5-beers. We imagine most restaurant menu meetings focus on what's in season or maybe what dishes customers particularly enjoyed. But Grant Achatz worries about nothing less than the whole culinary world closing in. In a particularly revealing video posted to the Alinea's YouTube channel, Achatz meets with his fellow chefs to discuss changes to the menu, and his unending search to "push it more."
He seems concerned with the problem of developing a style without getting stuck in a rut. The culprit of his self doubt is a dish of squid and green garbanzo beans. Achatz's girlfriend Heather Sperling, who is also the Chicago editor of Tasting Table, mentioned that it was her favorite dish on a recent visit to the Publican, which reminded him of a dish on their own menu. "Did they get that from us, or did we get that from them?" The Publican version of the squid and green garbanzo bean dish is off the menu tonight, though it will probably be back on by Thursday. Let us know if you try it. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgriXQZVHCk&feature=player_embedded NEW YORK—New York’s Solita Soho Hotel is now the latest property to join Choice Hotels International’s Ascend Collection. Dynasty Management is the owner and manager of the 42-room hotel.
Located in New York’s eclectic SoHo neighborhood, the Solita Soho Hotel offers guestrooms with dark wood furnishings, designer bedding, desks, plasma televisions and marble bathrooms with massage showerheads. Bottled water, high-speed Internet access and local telephone calls are all complimentary. |
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