Looking ahead
Does your company need some fine-tuning or a complete overhaul?
By Fred Koury
February 2008
Change is what business is
all about.
Those that do it well and do it quickly reap the profits,
while those that don’t become
stagnant and, in some cases, fail.
The challenge is, how much
change is enough? Is a few
minor tweaks here and there
enough to keep you competitive, or do you need to look at
changing the way you do business or even changing what you
sell in order to survive?
General Electric is a company that has always embraced
change. It started out focused
on lighting, but now is
involved in markets including
finance, industrial automation,
medical imaging, motors, railway locomotives, jet engines,
aviation materials and abrasives. It also co-founded and is
majority owner of media company NBC Universal.
Let’s look at another example:
The American Tobacco Co. It
was founded in 1890 and was
one of the original members of
the Dow Jones Industrial
Average. While antitrust action
eventually broke up the company, American Tobacco survived.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it started acquiring a lot of nontobacco-related companies and
renamed itself American
Brands, which later was
changed to today’s name of
Fortune Brands.
Fortune Brands owns some
of the most well-known brands
in the country, including Jim
Beam, Titleist, FootJoy, Moen
and Master Lock. Ironically,
the company shed its tobacco
holdings altogether.
The successful companies
were able to stay on top
because they invested in
research and development.
When you do that, you are constantly testing new ideas.
Some of the ideas might be
new products that you can
pilot, while others might be
diversification opportunities.
Maybe you can acquire a
business that would complement what you are already
doing, or maybe you can
develop it. But the end result is a stronger enterprise that
is under the same umbrella
that you have now.
With continual reinvestment
into R&D, you may also start to
realize that maybe your core
idea is flawed or just no longer
applicable to the market.
But no matter what the
change, reinvesting in your
company is what will help show
you the way. It might be a minor
tweak to an existing product to
keep you ahead of the competition or it might be the revelation
that you are about to become
extinct, but at least you will
have time to react.
In today’s economy, you not
only have to be willing to
make a change, but you also
have to actively seek it out. If
you don’t, the market will
change without you, leaving
you either behind the times, or
worse, out on the curb.
Our new look
As you probably have
noticed already, this month
marks a significant change for
Smart Business. With this
issue we are introducing an
all-new look to our publication, from the “flag” — our
logo across the top of the
cover — right down to the
page numbers.
We continually refine our
product, adding new features
here, tweaking the appearance
there. But every few years we
like to take a major step back
and revisit the overall design
of the publication.
As part of this latest effort,
we commissioned a design critique by one of the nation’s
top design firms for business-to-business media. Using feedback from that critique as well
as from readers, advertisers
and staff, we set Design
Director Jim Mericsko to
work on updating our design
with a fresher, more engaging
look. And that is what you will
find this month — from our
updated logo, which presents
a more sophisticated, business-like image, to our use of
different column widths and
justification styles.
While most of these changes
are subtle, the result is an
overall cleaner look employing elements that have been
proven over the years to create a more engaging, readable
product. And as you know by
now, our goal is to make
Smart Business a valuable,
quick-reading resource for
busy executives like you.
Please let us know how we
are doing.
FRED KOURY is president and CEO of Smart Business Network Inc. Reach him with your
comments at (800) 988-4726 or fkoury@sbnonline.com.
