Growth Tip #1 for Entrepreneurs and CEOs

As entrepreneurs, we are like architects. We have the power of choice and how to design our business. Our choices and how we execute these choices, will ultimately determine the value and return on capital and effort. Would you rather have smiling investors or scowling ones?

How we design a business, much like how architects design a house, determine the payoff. How an architect designs a house, influence the cost of construction and the resale value of the house. Architects may only be 10-12% of how much we invest in building a new home, but they influence the other 90% of construction costs as well as resale value.  How they design the house to capture views, size of rooms, uniqueness of the architecture, materials of construction and where they site the land and the growth rate of the neighborhood and scarcity of the surrounding land.

So here are a couple of suggestions - choose a large and growing market. Sound obvious? Take a look at the graphic below - is your product positioned for the following markets?

The Female Economy - HBR September 2009

Do you have products and services for the "Female Economy"?

Do you know how to find, and align your offerings to their changing choices and trends?

For an existing company, have you considered exporting?

The figure below is on the growth in airline routes and traffic. Where is your business located? Where are your future customers? What is your strategy to bridge between where you are, to your future drivers of demand?