Startup Whisperer Blog
How To Use Your Company’s ‘Insight Score’ To Change Your Market Position
This post originally appeared on Forbes and can be found here. You might have heard of the Boston Consulting Group’s Growth Share Matrix. It’s a framework that helps companies identify where to allocate capital across business lines and/or products. The framework is a 2×2 matrix that plots the market growth rate and your relative market strength. …
Building Diversity Into Your Products
There is so much going on in the world right now that it can be very difficult to stay focused and prioritized. There is a seemingly endless stream of dire health updates and political, social and economic unrest. I believe the most difficult component is to determine how you can take care of yourself and…
How To Make Performance Reviews Not Suck
It is performance review season again, and let’s face it: Performance reviews suck. According to a recent survey conducted by Mercer (via HR Dive), a mere 2% of companies believe their performance management process delivers high value, and fewer than 3% believe their feedback practices are excellent. From an employee’s perspective, performance reviews happen just once a…
How Technology Can Help Tackle Our Nation’s Literacy Crisis
Many people are not aware of the literacy crisis in our nation — or why they should care. Roughly 65% of the fourth and eighth graders in American public schools in 2017 were not proficient in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test results released by the U.S. Department of Education. According to NAEP,…
Four Core Behaviors That Successful Self-Made Entrepreneurs Have In Common
Though my career has been spent mostly at startups in the tech sector, I haven’t ever actually done the “starting up.” I’m usually brought in to help fix something or take it to the next level once it’s been started. It takes guts and grit to start something from scratch — a special kind of…
How The Power Of Language Can Grow Your Career And Business
You’ve probably heard that being multilingual is a great resume builder and a valuable asset to promote career growth. Being able to speak a language that’s in demand may even result in a promotion or a higher salary, especially in a competitive industry like the technology sector. I wanted to move beyond anecdotal information and…
How Aligning Your Team Can Bridge The Gap Between Strategy And Execution
Team alignment is a popular buzzword in business management, but not everyone is on the same page about what it means and why it’s essential. In the simplest terms, team alignment is when groups within the company have a similar understanding of the overall business strategy and can clearly articulate how they are working toward…
Four Ways A Startup Mentality Can Improve Your Next Project
The culture of startups is something of an urban legend in the business world, perpetuated by serial entrepreneurs who seem to have cracked the code for what makes a successful venture. While many startups do eventually fail, their fabled out-of-the-box thinking and energetic focus also drives innovation. What lessons does the fight for survival within these scrappy…
How To Put Machine Learning To Work For Your Business
Machine learning has been driving innovation in product features for several years, becoming a vital component of enhancing the consumer experience. However, in terms of what machine learning (ML) — and specifically, artificial intelligence (AI) — can do, we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. As a business leader, you may feel a bit…
There’s a massive opportunity gap in our country. Here’s how you can help.
I recently had the great pleasure of getting involved personally as well as professionally with Year Up – a fantastic program that I encourage everyone in my network to investigate because they make a real social impact. Year Up enables underprivileged young adults to move from minimum wage to meaningful careers in just one year by matching…
Augmented Reality Post On Forbes
I recently did a post on Forbes about augmented reality. You can read that here. Outside of the technology itself, I gave some advice around general practices that can be applied to kickstarting any innovation. That advice is: Fire Bullets First, Then Cannonballs – focus on product market fit before you go all-in your…
How To Leverage Augmented Reality To Drive Digital Innovation
When virtual reality (VR) first arrived on the scene, tech startups and innovators were overwhelmed by the possibilities of how VR experiences could transform our everyday lives. However, bulky headsets and carefully crafted virtual worlds aren’t on the current trajectory of technological innovation. Instead, augmented reality (AR), where layers of virtual reality enhance our daily experiences, is…