Business Mentor Weekly #17 – Identify Patents

Three different types of patents exist – utility patents, plant
patents, and design patents. Utility patents are patents for new,
useful, and non-obvious machines, manufactures, processes, and
compositions of matter. Plant patents are patents for the discovery
and reproduction of new varieties of vegetation that are new, useful,
and non-obvious. Design patents are patents for new, useful, and
non-obvious ornamental designs for articles of manufacture. Design
patents are unique in that the patent term is fourteen years from
issuance rather than twenty years from the filing date for plant and
utility patents. ~ www.mcw.edu/OTD

Implement This Principle: Patents provide a competitive edge in the
marketplace providing their value can be articulated to your market.

To Get These Results: A patent tells the marketplace that your
product is unique and it can only be acquired from you. It establishes
your company as a leader and one with know-how in your marketplace
beyond that of your competitors.

Thoughts to Ponder: Patents keep someone else from using your idea
without compensation. Patents provide marketing benefits, revenue
opportunities, industry control and may even be used as a bargaining
chip in some cases. Patents are not cheap, starting at about $5,000
plus filing fees in the $1,500 dollar range and going up from there,
but the benefits can be worth it. You can get help from a patent
attorney, www.legalzoom.com or even file them yourself.

Take Action: Research your options online. See if you have a product,
process, or design that can be patented by talking to an attorney or
someone you know who has gone through the patent process.

Next Week’s Topic: Copyright Strategy

Business Mentor Weekly #18 – Entrepreneurship

The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another
Mexican restaurant in the American suburb surely take a risk. But are
they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been done many times
before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in
their area, but create neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer
demand. Seen under this perspective they are surely not entrepreneurs
even though theirs is a new venture. – Peter F. Drucker

Implement This Principle: Understand the difference between an
entrepreneur and a business owner is one of the keys to uncovering the
source of real wealth generation.

To Get These Results: Propulsion of your efforts toward the highly
profitable world of innovation where the impact of your abilities
literally change the landscape of both your business and your
marketplace.

Thoughts to Ponder: Anyone can become an entrepreneur, and contrary
to what many believe it is a less risky venture than most businesses.
If you understand the nature of an innovative approach to business,
you will quickly see that it not only involves less risk, but it
involves doing business in very lucrative spaces within your own
target market.

Take Action: Read Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F.
Drucker, do not wait to do this. If you are in business, this is the
single most important read of your business career, bar none. Without
the wisdom in this book you will not be equipped to face our trying
economic times with the confidence that you have taken the steps you
need to advance your company.

Learn to spot opportunities for innovation. If you need help call me
at 619-985-0799, I can help you find them, but do not wait, we are in
an economic storm and it is creating a wake of destruction in its
path.

Next Week’s Topic: Innovation Categories

t.com –

Business Mentor Weekly #19 – Innovation

Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of
entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new
capacity to create wealth. Innovation, indeed, creates a resource.
Innovation does not have to be technical, does not indeed have
to be a “thing” altogether. Wherever introduced, it changes the
economy from supply-driven to demand-driven, regardless almost of the
productive level of the economy. “Innovation,” then, is an
economic or social rather than a technical term. It can be defined as
changing the yield of resources. – Peter F Drucker

Implement This Principle: Innovation is the specific tool of
entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an
opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is
capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned,
capable of being practiced.

To Get These Results: A practicing entrepreneur creates something
new, something different; they change or transmute values. An
entrepreneur:

• Tries to create value

• Tries to make a contribution

• Has developed principles

• Has practices that are adhered to

• Has disciplines which are followed

Thoughts to Ponder: Not every business owner is an entrepreneur. A
businessman does better what is already being done, he:

• Makes better bread

• Cleans the carpet better

• Makes a better repair

However, an entrepreneur is an innovator, he:

• Searches for change

• Responds to change

• Exploits change as an opportunity

Becoming an entrepreneur is less risky, more exciting and is more
predictable (the exception is innovation within the new knowledge
area.) Innovation is not necessarily an invention; it is organized,
perceptual, rational and systematic.

Take Action: Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the
sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate
opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to
apply the principles of successful innovation.

Recently I had an opportunity to assist a client in the development
of a new division based upon industry changes. Call me at 619-985-0799
to discuss innovative opportunities that might exist in your industry.

Next Week’s Topic: What is our business?

Business Mentor Weekly #20 – What is our business?

”What is our business is not determined by the producer but by the
consumer. It is not defined by the company’s name, statutes, or
articles of incorporation but by the want the consumer satisfies when
he buys a product or service.” ~ Peter F. Drucker

Implement This Principle: Knowing what your business is from the
perspective of the client sets in motion the possibility of
constructive redefinition of how your business is conducted.

To Get These Results: Gain competitive advantage and therefore
increased market share as you reduce unnecessary expenditures trying
to operate outside of your customer’s reality.

Thoughts to Ponder: The question “What is our Business” can only
be answered by peering into your business as an outsider, from what
the consumer sees, thinks, believes and wants at any given time must
be accepted by as an objective fact because your real product is a
satisfied customer!

Take Action: Go to your customers for honest answers to the question
“What want are we satisfying” record your answers and introduce
changes based upon the results.

Next Week’s Topic: Who is our customer?

Business Mentor Weekly #21 – Who is our customer, and what does our
customer consider valuable?

Look at your customer base. Find the 20% which represents the 80% of
your profits. What do those folks have in common? If you can’t decide
who your target customer is, DECIDE who it is NOT. It may be easier to
decide who you DO NOT want to serve than who you do. ~ Christopher M.
Knight

Implement This Principle: Knowing who your customer is aligns
marketing and promotion, knowing what they value aligns product
research and development.

To Get These Results: Knowing who your customer really is focuses
your marketing resources where they can do the most good and creates a
higher return on promotional activities. Knowing what they value helps
direct product development initiatives, lowers overall costs of
development.

Thoughts to Ponder: Marketing, promotional activities and product
development are expensive propositions which highlight the importance
of systematically developing policies to keep the main thing, the main
thing. The business landscape is covered with the ruins of failed
promotions and products which could have all been avoided if only
companies would have understood who their customers really are and
what they value.

Take Action: Analyze your products and services relative to customers
who have purchase them. Categorize customers by marketing criteria to
determine who the customer for this product really is. Determine what
it is about your products these customers are willing to pay for. This
exercise will help you better target both your marketing and product
development efforts.

Next Week’s Topic: Complete a Market Analysis