In August 2010, ShoreBank, the nation’s first, largest, and leading community bank, was shut down by regulators. It was a major blow to the social enterprise sector. For almost forty years, ShoreBank made more than $4 billion in mission investments and financed more than 59,000 units of affordable housing. It spearheaded the national movement of …

Understanding your target market will give you the information needed for an effective promotional plan. Your target market needs and buyer behavior are the basis for the plan. The market needs dictate your positioning and possible competitive advantage while buyer behavior will determine who you need to sell to and where you need to have …

While many entrepreneurs tend to think first of selling products or services to consumers, far larger markets exist in selling to other companies. Those sales, known as business to business, or B2B, roughly account for ten times the sales directly to consumers. So if you are undecided about what kind of business to launch, and …

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an explosion of colleges and universities offering social enterprise or variations of that theme at the graduate level. Many of these programs are tied to a business school, which can really help when you bring your great social change idea to the marketplace. And if you’re already mid-career …

Have you lost that “loving” feeling? You’ve survived the layoffs, cut wages, reorganizations and other company changes. You‘re stressed out, fed up and ready to bolt. On the other hand, the economy is going nowhere, the analysts aren’t sure if we’re in recovery, recession or something in-between and you’re being told “you have a job, …

The role of the boards and management changes as the company grows and the management team becomes more diverse, with a wide range of experts who can contribute to strategy in different ways. A company passes through several stages in its life cycle. In the first stage ‘Start-up’ strategy is developed and implemented by the founder …

Guest Submission by Steven Ober, EdD Leaders live and work in complex systems. In fact, we all do. These systems include our organizations, our teams, our families, our communities, and our larger society. In today’s world, it is incumbent on those of us who coach leaders to deepen and broaden our ability to coach from …

In a world with dynamic markets and fickle customers, it’s best to build into your plan strategies to respond quickly to new opportunities and threats. Long gone are the days when you could just create a valuable product, price it to attract customers while making a profit, and then just keep doing the same thing …

Depends. All too often, these two terms have become blurred. But they are different concepts. Here’s a good way to distinguish them, quoting from the Free Management Library’s strategic plan blogger, Carter McNamara: Strategic Planning Should Be Organization-Wide Strategic planning is best viewed as clarifying the overall purpose and priorities of the organization. There are …