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Do you Suffer from Sand Castle Management? Take this Litmus test.
With the intellectual economy well upon us, how many corporations do you think still have their heads buried in the proverbial sand castle? Not mine, you say? Don't forget - - competitive advantages of old are no longer the competitive advantages of today. Technology is more easily and quickly duplicated, and by offshore competitors who do it for less. In days gone by (old industrial economy), a company's greatest assets were their physical and natural resources. Today (new intellectual economy), the biggest competitive advantage is a company's human capital. It's no longer the widget, brand image, or some secret formula. No, what makes one company better than another today is the human capital behind these things. In a recent Harris Study, it was noted that nearly 73% of a company's bottom line is tied to its people asset.
Founders at Work
This is a picture of my copy of Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days. It has broken my record for the “book with most stickies.” My system is that the stickies on the top edge are ideas for my next book, and the ones on the side are ideas for this blog. As you can see, it’s a gold mine for great stories about entrepreneurship. Here is a list of some of my favorites.
Giving Employees a Test Run Before Hiring
Be gone with staid interviewing questions, behavioral “what ifs” and real-life simulations. Just put the candidate to work and see for yourself firsthand whether he/she is actually what he/she claims to be. Not that all other techniques should be done away with entirely, but at least with a pre-hire trial approach, decisions don’t need to be solely dependent on a set of variables that are tenuous at best.
Descriptive Trademarks
The title here is a bit misleading as descriptive words are not typically allowed to be registered on the USPTO’s trademark Principal Register. Let’s back up a little... One of the main points (some would argue THE main point) of having a Federal trademark is to have exclusive rights to a name, a logo or a slogan within your industry. Given that, words that “merely describe” the goods or services are not going to be allowed.
Franchises - Emotional Fulfillment - The Challenge
If you have trouble shifting your seat to the upright position for take off every morning, you should probably see if there's a better flight crew to help get you where you really want to go. Perhaps a Franchise is the answer, and perhaps it's not. However, until you ask these tough questions, and answer them with conviction, you won't know whether you have the possibility of leaping out of that rut, and over the Chrysler building in a single bound.
Is Continuous Improvement More Important Than Results?
Could a focus on continuous improvement prove more useful than concentrating just on the results we seek?
Who are you following on Twitter?
People you follow on Twitter are part of your public online profile.
Profit Success Using LinkedIn – Actions You can Replicate
LinkedIn is networking virtual style. But will it help you find and get new clients. See the latest research.
Are You Delivering?
So are you really providing a superior product or service or experience? When is the last time you checked on this? How you do you find out? If you are saying ABSOLUTELY…..then I’m double daring you to prove it. If you aren’t sure, then congratulations, you have a realistic and healthy outlook on your business. If you are pretty sure you DON”T have a good product or service, then it’s time to make some drastic changes NOW or GET OUT of what you are doing.

How To Litmus Test Your Website's SEO Campaign?
Experts all agree that PPC is an excellent way to test your advertising campaign in several different ways. This dilemma becomes especially important for those advertisers relying heavily on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing campaign.
WRITING FOR FUN AND FUNDRAISING
Writing for charities can be fun and profitable too. Here are some ground rules.
Financial Sector Development as an Essential Determinant for Achieving the MDGs: Increasing Private Credit Shown to Reduce Income Inequality
Whether or not one has access to private credit is a litmus test for wealth or poverty. If you're rich, you have it, and can use it to get richer. If you're poor, you don't have access to it, and you remain poor. Conventional wisdom suggests that building up the financial sector has little effect on this gap.

The Dark Side of Goal Achievement: Where's the Tipping Point
Despite its many benefits, goal achievement does have a "dark side." Where's the tipping point? Read this article and learn the 3 telltale signs you are on the dark side of goal achievement. Do any of these sound like you?
The Dark Side of Goal Achievement: Where's the Tipping Point
Despite its many benefits, goal achievement does have a "dark side." Where's the tipping point? Read this article and learn the 3 telltale signs you are on the dark side of goal achievement. Do any of these sound like you?

Other litmus test Related Articles

Financial Sector Development as an Essential Determinant for Achieving the MDGs: Increasing Private Credit Shown to Reduce Income Inequality
Whether or not one has access to private credit is a litmus test for wealth or poverty. If you're rich, you have it, and can use it to get richer. If you're poor, you don't have access to it, and you remain poor. Conventional wisdom suggests that building up the financial sector has little effect on this gap.

How to Scientifically Increase Your Conversion Rate
Learn how to test and what to test, to drastically improve your website and increase your sales.
Keep your Business Alive with Smart Marketing
Growth is the real goal That is the litmus test of keeping your business alive. Look at nature. Everything that is alive continues to grow. Growing your business is the best way of keeping it alive in the long term. How do you continue to grow your business? Feed it, nurture it, invest in it and treat the business as a journey - not a destination. On your journey you must keep one eye immediately on the road in front of you and the other on the horizon. Invest in your business success with smart marketing. Smart marketing does not entail expensive advertising campaigns
The E Word: Ethics
Perhaps it’s time for Ethics to take its seat at the table. To be a central part of the ‘inner sanctum’ of thoughtful discussion when decision-makers have tough choices to make. It’s long past time for ethics to stop being the appendage to the body of how we come to decision and then action and actually be the guiding brain of how we do that. Ethics should be the litmus test against which all decisions should be measured. It should be integrated into the way we think even as individuals as we move through our lives and come up against tough choices that we each inevitably have to make in our lives.

Back to Basics
Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply take a test proving what you know and that customers would then flock to you based on your test results?
Making Headlines: Passing the Publicity Litmus Test
You think your press release is perfection…but you may be a bit biased. At this point you essentially have two options: send it blindly, or give it what I like to call the “publicity litmus test.” And don’t worry, there is no chemistry involved!
Check Your Brand Positioning in 5 Minutes
Understanding brand positioning is very important if you want to correct misconceptions and off-brand opinions of your brand. You may have every intention of analyzing your brand to make sure that it is in a position of strength by participating in scientific research to that end. But first as a litmus test, you might find it useful to do a little under the radar analysis to get a quick feel of your stake holder's opinions regarding your brand positioning. We are going to casually ask them.
Knowing Is Better Than Guessing
Article Highlights * You don’t need to test more than 5 people at a time. * Test early and often. * Focus on specific flows.

Prioritizing Organizational Wants Versus Needs - How To Tell The Difference
In strategic planning, we must learn to separate wants from actual needs. We are forced to make tough decisions that open one door and close another. Weighty strategic decisions can be made easier if we apply a decision “triage” to help structure the cognitive process we must complete. But how do we separate requirements from “desirements” in the business world fairly and consistently? Sometimes budgetary constraints drive us to adopt a strategy of eliminating options that are not actually requirements for our business, at least not at this time. For that first round of elimination, we need a litmus test of sorts. More to the point, what we need is a decision process to help us filter the wants from the needs. This article provides a system for making such an evaluation within our strategic planning process.
Using Employment Tests
On today’s market, there are hundreds of extremely well-developed employment tests. However, many widely distributed and highly marketed tests do not meet generally accepted standards for test development and validation. Organizations considering the use of employment tests should carefully consider how the test was developed, the extent to which a test yields stable and consistent results, the relationship between test scores and sales success, and the non-discriminatory nature of the test.
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