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Why Startups Fail: Six Issues to Avoid

Leading Blog

Entrepreneurs can avoid false starts by undertaking a thorough and thoughtful design process before commencing engineering work. Does that startup have a proven business model? Are the founders eager to grow the business? False Positives. Can the startup access the resources necessary to expand rapidly?

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How Investors React When Companies Announce They’re Moving to a SaaS Business Model

Harvard Business Review

Adobe’s radical transformation from a product-based business model to a service-based one raised eyebrows in the industry, with many software vendors now wondering how radically they should approach the SaaS model. Make sure existing products, processes, and culture do not prohibit the SaaS model from blossoming.

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Is the Cost of Innovation Falling?

Harvard Business Review

The answer to that question has dramatic consequences for low-GDP countries and small businesses everywhere. If the cost of innovation is falling, that should enable more of it from poorer countries, companies or cooperatives. Similar dynamics seem to apply in institutional and business model innovation.

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Do Your Customers Actually Want a “Smart” Version of Your Product?

Harvard Business Review

In the meantime, we had successfully engineered sensor technology that allowed our residential ceiling fans to respond to the indoor environment, including changes in temperature and humidity, as well as occupants’ motion. The traditional business model is based on identifying a need and meeting it, or defining a problem and solving it.

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Google vs. the EU Explains the Digital Economy

Harvard Business Review

To understand the issues involved in this tussle, it is important to understand that firms like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook are simultaneously competing and cooperating in multiple fronts — a phenomenon we call interlocking ecosystems. Google’s antitrust battle with the European Union seems to be heating up.

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What Is Business For? Cast Your Vote!

Harvard Business Review

Ashoka's Hybrid Value Chain: Revving the Engine of Sustained Global Prosperity and Social Value. Inside-Out Transformation: A Hybrid Business Model for a Converging World. The Mondragon Cooperative Experience: Humanity at Work. The Sustainable Plant: Grainger's Pilot in Sustainable Innovation on the Factory Floor.

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Teams Can’t Innovate If They’re Too Comfortable

Harvard Business Review

A philanthropist and a magazine editor discussed new business models for publishing. They engineer productive collisions of people to tackle important topics, through clearer questions, challenging conversations, and listening with curiosity. Einstein would have been proud.). If you’re like most people, not often. Skill sets.