How Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship are Related?

There is an important relationship between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact, creativity is the ability to develop new ideas and to discover new ways of looking at problems and opportunities; innovation is the ability to apply creative solutions to those problems and opportunities in order to enhance people’s lives or to enrich society. Entrepreneurship is a result of a disciplined and systematic process of applying creativity and innovations to needs and opportunities in the marketplace. 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. All products or services are the combination of three factors: nature raw materials, labor (physical and mental) and capital. Entrepreneurs, as innovators, are people who create new combinations of these factors and then present to the market for assessment by consumers. Porter (1985) argues that, while successful businesses will Continue reading

Sales Forecasting – Meaning and Methods

Financial forecasting is a significant part of financial planning process. The financial forecasting begins with sales forecasting. Sales forecast is a forecast of firm’s future sales both in terms of volume and value. The sales forecast always begins with analyzing the historical trends in sales over the past periods. It also takes to consideration the future economic prosperity if given line of business. To determine the forecasted sales growth, the firm must rely on competitive market conditions, customers tastes and preferences, change in technology and future possibilities of market expansion. Nowadays, several statistical methods like regression analysis, time series analysis, econometric models are used to consider all these factors in providing sales forecasts. Some factors that should be considered while developing sales  forecast are as follows: Provide a projection of divisional sales based on historical growth and combine the divisional sales forecasts to provide a approximate corporate sales forecast. Forecast Continue reading

Intensive Growth Strategies – Ansoff Matrix – Product-Market Grid

Intensive Growth Strategies –  Expansion through Intensification   Intensification involves expansion within the existing line of business. Intensive growth strategy involves safeguarding the present position and expanding in the current product-market space to achieve growth targets. Such an approach is very useful for enterprises that have not fully exploited the opportunities existing in their current products-market domain. A firm selecting an intensification strategy, concentrates on its primary line of business and looks for ways to meet its growth objectives by increasing its size of operations in its primary business. Intensive expansion of a firm can be accomplished in three ways, namely, market penetration, market development and product development first suggested in Ansoff’s model. Intensification strategy is followed when adequate growth opportunities exist in the firm’s current products-market space. However, while going in for internal expansion, the management should consider the following factors. While there are a number of expansion options, Continue reading

Evolution of Human Resource Management (HRM)

Human Resource Management (HRM) is defined as the strategic approach to manpower management in an organization and also this is a function of the company which focuses on recruiting the management to provide further information to the employees, how to take the business to the top level. This process is really important to today’s businesses, it studied that employees working in teams or individually are the two main contributors which helps to succeed in the business objectives. The managers of the businesses in this generation are responsible in selecting employees, planning the goals of the company, planning how the business can use the resources in effective ways, assigning tasks for the employees, giving information to the employees how a task should be completed by using few resources, giving feedback’s how they can change their behaviors, introducing new technology to improve performance of the employees, taking responsibilities of the entire business Continue reading

Ashridge Portfolio Matrix

Corporate Parenting is a strategy employed by highly centralized and diversified firms  with large resource pools. It views the corporation in terms of resources and capabilities  that can be used to build business units value as well as generate synergies across  business units.  Corporate parenting generates corporate strategy by focusing on the core competencies of  the parent corporation and on the value create from the relationship between the parent  and its businesses. There are basically three styles of corporate parenting as follows; financial control,  strategic planning and strategic control. Financial Control:  Under this style the role of the corporate parent is to monitor and  evaluate the financial performance of investment portfolio of the respective business  units. The corporate managers act as agents on behalf of share holders and financial  markets to identify and acquire viable assets and businesses. The business unit  managers are given the autonomy to carry out business Continue reading

Forecasting for Strategic Planning

Forecasting is a collection of mostly statistical and/or judgmental procedures   which aim at predicting the future based on the available information and/or data (These processes may include activities such as data collection, data pre-processing and preliminary data analysis, forecasting method selection, which also involves model selection, model fitting, and diagnostic checking, and control in a forecasting system in use). In such processes, forecasting has lots of potentials for strategic level managers including revealing system dynamics, problem determination, predicting, monitoring, and control. Forecasting techniques are used by managers to plan future capacity to meet market demand and to procure the needed inputs to produce this demand at optimum costs. Forecasting models are used to predict future aspects of business operation. They include averages, moving averages, weighted moving averages, exponential smoothing, linear trend models, and simple and multiple regression models. Forecasting as a Strategic Decision-Making Tool Surviving in highly competitive markets Continue reading