The expression "creative destruction" derives from the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter’s book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, published in 1942. He coined the phrase to describe the process of change that accompanies innovation. In the book Schumpeter commented that capitalism:

…incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. [...]

Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Alan Lakein

Yet few startups have a business plan and those that do have generally only written it to raise funding. Having started several successful businesses and a few unsuccessful ones I can tell you from first hand experience that the time you invest in preparing a business plan is [...]

If you’ve ever read about goal setting you are sure to have come across the idea of SMART goals. On the other hand you might not have heard of DUMB goals, depending on what you read DUMB goals are defined as:

Doable, Understandable, Manageable & Beneficial. (Wikipedia)
Decisive, Unique, Meaningful and Bold. (Jeff De Cagna)
Dreamy, [...]

‘People with goals succeed because they know where they are going… It’s as simple as that’
Earl Nightingale.
If you read any good book, website or blog about starting a business you’ll normally find that the section on developing a business plan talks about defining your exit strategy. It can seem odd to many, after all you’re [...]

Richard Tyler the Enterprise Editor of the Telegraph has recently written the post Government encourages entrepreneurs to become mentors saying that:
Mentoring is the new tax break - at least according to the Government (which can’t really afford the latter any more). Alistair Darling is a big fan as we see below. He is calling on [...]

Having recently been asked about any of my own business nightmares what Seth Godin writes in his post We specialize in everything strikes a cord:

… if you can find the best in the world to do what you want, no matter what it is you want, does that change things?
… When choice is limited, I [...]

In a recent blog post “And so it begins… (again)” Rachel Elnaugh drew attention to a review of her new book “Business Nightmares” written by Jonathan Guthrie of the Financial Times saying:

Basically he has used the book as an excuse to slag me off (yet again) for being that business failure who is now simply [...]

Far too often the reason that businesses do things for the way they do is nothing more than “because that’s how it’s always been done”. It’s not just businesses either we do it at home too; we eat three meals a day, because that’s what we do; we point the sofa at the TV; we [...]

Nike have been using “Just Do It” since 1988 when it was apparently coined at a meeting between Nike’s ad agency of the time Wieden and Kennedy and a group of Nike employees. Since then Nike have grown to become one of the worlds most successful brands and “Just Do It” one of the most [...]

I’ve just read an article in the FT about entrepreneurs taking a shotgun approach to start-ups which says:

The quest to develop the internet’s next big thing can be full of unexpected twists and turns. PayPal, the online payments service, started as a way of transmitting payments securely between Palm Pilots. …
Flickr, the photo website, grew [...]