strategic thinking
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Going back to 1998, Symantec was best known for Norton utilities and Norton anti-virus, says Thompson. When he arrived in 1999, right after windows 1998 was launched. Symantec had had a bad series of quarter. In his first 100 days, he looked at the company product portfolio and found products that were not of strategic value. The brightest star was Norton anti-virus. Symantec had viewed itself as a consumer oriented desktop software compan...more
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From equity, to bonds, to real estate, MissionPoint Capital Partners co-founder Jesse Fink explains how traditional capital markets can be reoriented toward a low-carbon economy. Supporting non-profits is crucial in long-term environmental thinking, says Fink, as this sector pushes policy. But only for-profit business will catalyze true market solutions with pull.
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Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, had a sense of community, says Tilenius. He constructed a process of feedback to make it easier for two strangers to buy and sell. Having been an entrepreneur before eBay, Omidyar was thinking creatively about how to get profitability. The feedback system was his way of getting out of the middle. At every stage he found ways of letting the community run itself so that the company could become profitable...more
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People can't be forced to be friends, notes Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but innovative entrepreneurs can facilitate a friendly work environment. He attributes part of his enterprise's success to casual, unstructured communication woven into the work day. His hope? To create the space for co-workers to freely associate ideas and stretch their imagination.
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Khosla talks about how Juniper Systems started, and the role of customer feedback in the product development. There was not one vendor thinking of building an OC48 router for the internet. Juniper perservered and took a risk in the technology, despite the majority of customer feedback.
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When starting a business one tends not to focus on employee issues. Hawkins stesses the importance of laying a strong foundation of human resources from the very beginning. He shares ideas that he feels make sound human resource policies. When you are thinking of compensation between people, he says, you should always imagine that everyone knows everything.
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Smith explains that fundraising is very hard in the non-profit sector. New Ventures typically co-invests in A rounds with other venture capital firms, typically newer groups that have an openness to thinking about new solutions and understand the power of entrepreneurs. Generally, deals are in multi-millions with clearly defined milestones over several years.
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The Global Fund for Women believes there is room for a different kind of philanthropy to exist in other parts of the world. In most parts, there is a huge division between those who have and those who do not have. Those with wealth do not tend to see investment in development as part of their responsibility. Ramdas notes that this is thinking that must change.
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John Roos, chief executive officer of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, recommends having a simple mission statement when thinking about a business. You have to know what you are good at, where your core strengths lie, have a game plan and then stick with it, he says.
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Mandelbaum sold her first major company, Skyline Toys, when the company was at a critical juncture: they either need to find a strategic partner or raise a lot of money. A perfect partner was found in IDEO, and she sold the company. Mandelbaum decided to take her career in a new direction because she was intrigued by the opportunities of the internet and was interested in joining a venture firm.
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Smith believes that since their monetary values are not large in comparison to the size of the education industry, investments must be leveraged to get maximum effect. New School's helps to leverage their investments by bringing together a partner group that includes venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and educators, who each bring different strengths and views to the venture.
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Frame believes it is very rarely that startups build a vision. He insists that the vision is a combination of shared inputs among the leadership team. Frame describes how the company can achieve their vision by breaking it into strategic imperatives and objectives. A vision statement is essential to keep the goals of the company aligned as it scales up.
