How to Fix a Sales Problem [5 Second MBA] | Gruzzles | Fast Company

Have you seen this 5-Second MBA feature in Fast Company? This is a WONDERFUL image, and oh so true. Simple but not easy to execute.

How to Innovate in a Downturn – WSJ.com

What do nylon, Hewlett-Packard and the iPod have in common? Would you believe they all launched during a major financial downturn?

Excellent article by Harvard B School Prof and McKinsey partner Bhaskar Chakravorti from the Wall Street Journal, chastening entrepreneurs that this is NOT the time to hunker down. Rather, “There is considerable anecdotal evidence that crises can be catalysts for creativity.”

Need help “making lemonade”? Chakravorti’s article will do it!

2009 Will Be an Economic Engine for Change

Interesting article from HBR Online, predicting the coming year will be “an economic engine for change.”

Author Jeff Stibel offers some historical examples supporting his point that economic upheavals create the greatest opportunities. I rather like his analogy with forest fires as a necessary part of nature’s life-cycle, this may “clear some underbrush” that isn’t contributing but is using resources.

Economic contraction creates market dislocation, i.e., recession upsets the status quo in a free market system. And ergo, opportunities. As I alluded to in an earlier post, the TRICK of all this is of course figuring out the right thing, the right way, at the right time. Bon chance to us all!