Spreading More Crumbs of Cogitation

I’ve had the opportunity to contribute a more guest posts of late to two of my favorite blogs.

On the IMTS blog, I discuss lessons learned from their recent Exhibitor’s Workshop on extending your brand presence at trade shows.  This is in essence a follow-on to a previous post here discussing extending your brand presence at industrial customers, and I suggest focusing more on your upfront show efforts than your booth design, as 75% of booth visitors have pre-planned their stop by your booth.

On Apollo Sikevicius‘s Lean Startups Blog, I contributed an article on why implementing Six Sigma in your startup or small business can put you on the fast path to irrelevance.  The premise is that Six Sigma (as typically employed) is inward-looking and can slow down your pace of product, business model, or process innovation, speedy execution of which is critical to the success of many startups.  Feel free to contribute to the debate on this, as my views certainly are open to criticism.

Additionally, in case you don’t follow my Posterous blog, Impulsive Cogitation (where I share briefer thoughts generally on content found elsewhere on the web, with a similar focus to this blog), I have put up two lengthier posts that, in reality, generated a bit more than just “impulsive” cogitation.  The first is a reference to an article from strategy + business regarding the major demographic shifts we will see over the next 40 years. I provide some thoughts in the impact to your business planning and argue that the forces of demographics are stronger than even global warming in impacting what the future will look like.  The other post is a summary of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that reviews some of the leadership lessons from Jack Welch in his tenure as CEO of GE.  Since I worked at GE towards the end of the Welch era, I had the fortune of witnessing many of these practices, and it is a bit disappointing how much Jack’s star has dimmed since his departure (due to both his own personal choices and the unravelling of some of GE’s more aggressive financial activities).

You may also find these interesting:

• 10 Ways to Extend your Brand with Industrial Customers
• Innovation in Aftermarket Offerings for Industrial Marketers
• Book Review – Beating the Commodity Trap
• Mitigating Strategic, Operational, and Organizational Business Risk
• Market Segmentation for Electric Vehicles