Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

  From HBR, By William A. Sahlman  When I receive a business plan, I always read the résumé section first. Not because the people part of the new venture is the most important, but because without the right team, none of the other parts really matters.   Fourteen “Personal” Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer  Where are the founders from? Where have they been educated?  Where have they worked—and for whom?  What have they accomplished—professionally and personally—in the past?  What is their reputation within the business community?  What experience do they have that is directly relevant to the opportunity they are pursuing?  What skills, abilities, and knowledge do they have?  How realistic are they about the venture’s chances for success and the tribulations it will face?  Who else needs to be on the team?  Are they prepared to recruit high-quality people?  How will they respond to adversity?  Do they have the mettle to make the inevitable hard choices that have to be made

  Sales is broken? How to get feedback from your team Why Buyers are disrupting the sales process Who is your customer CMO and CIO partnership in Digital Transformation Tips for scaling product Apples decade of Success “No CEO in history has created as much total shareholder value as Mr Cook. When he took over the company had a market value of $349bn. Today it is worth $2.5trn, more than any other listed firm ever. Under his aegis annual sales surged from $108bn in 2011 to $274bn last year. Net profit more than doubled to $57bn, overtaking Saudi Aramco’s oil-fuelled earnings and turning Apple into the world’s most profitable company. Less widely noticed, during his tenure the “Apple economy”—its annual revenue plus everything other companies make on one of its platforms—has grown sevenfold to more than $1trn.

4 D's of Investing The growing use of Robotics Master the Leadership Why Warren Buffet never bought Google stock  The One Metric that Identifies Qualified Buyers The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Block The India Opportunity

This synthetic bio startup raised $52 million to make tumours reveal themselves The best books on The Age of Revolution Is your differentiation based on outcome or features New eCommerce paradigm - look at boxes trucks and bikes Why NPS doesn't mean Retention Five golden rules for coaching 

  Innovations inspired by Nature Why smart and hardworking people don't succeed Inspiring books to read Accelerate your professional services business Framework to grow your business

  Aussie Startup acquired in the US for $2bn    How to write a B2B sales proposition Humanity is stuck in short term thinking? How to retain your customers Build things that can last 1000 years What do prospects think when salespeople fail AIs Competitive Advantage

As part of our ongoing interviews with CEO's, Media Personalities, Philanthropists, and VC’s, to gauge the innovation and startups landscape in Australia, today we showcase our interview with Freelance Journalist, Public Speaker  Mr Brad Howarth , who writes on Australia’s startup industry, digital marketing, dangers of climate change and other relevant topics in this domain. This is what Brad has to say in a detailed interview with me. Read it here

Every day we read/hear about the new web 2.0 applications that start up with interesting concepts used. The recent acquisition of YouTube by Google has raised hope for new startups to realize their dream of making it big time. Aussies are not behind in this trend. There are quite a few interesting applications that have come out of hibernation. To-do list - Remember the Milk It allows users to manage tasks online as any to-do list will do. It is integrated with Google Maps, and Skype (IM) and is available on Mobiles as well. This is a very popular application around the globe with more than 100,000 users from 155 countries. It was launched in October 2005. Digg clone for funniest email - FWDitOn This is inspired by digg . It allows users to read hilarious emails, do a rating and share it with others. It is an interesting concept and has caught the attention of a few Venture Capitalists from overseas. This site was covered recently on TechCrunch . Community for parents -