" Introducing a family of products for small businesses."

the company took advantage of its early lead to invest in a variety of strengths. Intuit enhanced its position with distributors by, including QuickBooks, an accounting program. It brought sophisticated marketing techniques to an industry that 우리카지노 “viewed customer calls as interruptions to the sacred art of programming,” according to the company’s founder and chairman, Scott Cook. It established a superior product-design process with multifunctional teams that included marketing and technical support. And Intuit invested heavily to provide customers with outstanding technical support for free.

Are my goals for growth too conservative or too aggressive?

After defining or redefining the business and verifying its basic soundness, an entrepreneur should determine whether plans for its growth are appropriate. Different enterprises can and should grow at different rates. Setting the right pace is as important to a young business as it is to a novice bicyclist. For either one, too fast or too slow can lead to a fall. The optimal growth rate for a fledgling enterprise is a function of many interdependent factors. (See the insert “Finding the Right Growth Rate.”)

Finding the Right Growth Rate

Finding the optimal growth rate for a new enterprise is a difficult and critical task. To set the right pace, entrepreneurs must ...

Executing the Strategy: Can I Do It?

The third question entrepreneurs must ask themselves may be the hardest to answer because it requires the most candid self-examination: Can I execute the strategy? Great ideas don’t guarantee great performance. Many young companies fail because the entrepreneur can’t execute the strategy; for instance, the venture may run out of cash, or the entrepreneur may be unable to generate sales or fill orders. Entrepreneurs must examine three areas—resources, organizational capabilities, and their personal roles—to evaluate their ability to carry out their strategies.

Do I have the right resources and relationships?

The lack of talented employees is often the first obstacle to the successful implementation of a strategy. During the start-up phase, many ventures cannot attract top-notch employees, so the founders perform most of the crucial tasks themselves and recruit whomever they can to help out. After that initial period, entrepreneurs can and should be ambitious in seeking new talent, especially if they want their businesses to grow quickly. Entrepreneurs who hope that they can turn underqualified and inexperienced employees into star performers eventually reach the conclusion, along with Intuit founder Cook, that “you can’t coach height.” Moreover, after a venture establishes even a short track record, it can attract a much higher caliber of employee.

Entrepreneurs who hope to turn underqualified employees into star performers are almost always disappointed.

In determining how to upgrade the workforce, entrepreneurs must address many complex and sensitive issues: Should I recruit individuals for specific slots or, as is commonly the case in talent-starved organizations, should I create positions for promising candidates? Are the recruits going to manage or replace existing employees? How extensive should the replacements be? Should the replacement process be gradual or quick? Should I, with my personal attachment to the business, make termination decisions myself or should I bring in outsiders?

A young venture needs more than internal resources. Entrepreneurs must also consider their customers and sources of capital. Ventures often start with the customers they can attract the most quickly, which may not be the customers the company eventually needs. Similarly, entrepreneurs who begin by bootstrapping, using money from friends and family or loans from local banks, must often find richer sources of capital to build sustainable businesses.카지노사이트

For a new venture to survive, some resources that initially are external may have to become internal. Many start-ups operate at first as virtual enterprises because the founders cannot afford to produce in-house and hire employees,