Biznology

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The 2011 holiday shopping season blur, though hectic, was a welcome event for e-commerce sellers and online retailers. Recording increases from 14 percent on Free Shipping Day to 26 percent on Black Friday, online sellers generated sales from $500 million on Thanksgiving to almost $3 billion during the entire week of Christmas. These results continue the wonderful annual growth trend for e-commerce. For example, in 2009, online sales equaled $129 billion, increasing to $143 billion in 2010, with a projected increase in 2011 to $197 billion. Plus, Forester Research predicts that sales volume will increase to an amazing $279 billion by 2015. Read the remainder of this entry »

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My last post, about Steve Jobs’ passing, seems to have put me in mind of how innovation happens. One of Jobs’ secrets was that he always kept pushing innovation, even though Apple was growing larger and larger. If you’ve started to see significant growth in your small business, you’re likely realizing that success is a mixed blessing. More growth means larger revenue streams, but it can also bring logistical hassles in equal proportion. There’s nothing that can take the fun out of financial success faster than unmanageable logistics. And if you’re running a one-man operation, filling orders and dealing with shipping can begin to monopolize all your time. If you’re spending time packaging orders, that’s time taken away from your innovative focus. Logistics and other distractions that come with success can quickly turn into opportunity costs, preventing you from focusing on creating more of the innovations that got you here in the first place.

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Image via CrunchBase

Steve Jobs’ tragic death yesterday resulted in great accolades, making it easy to forget that he took a lot of criticism for his leadership style during his tenure at Apple.  I think businesses would do well to study the Steve Jobs leadership method and take a few pages from his playbook. The bottom line in business ultimately is more than just having a vision. It’s the effective execution of vision. And nobody knew how to play the “get stuff done” game like Steve Jobs did. Some of the folks in the business community who took issue with his leadership manners tend to have more than a few things in common: they didn’t create the iPhone or the iPad and didn’t generate more than 8.3 billion dollars stemming largely from their own ideas. Read the remainder of this entry »