Corporate Collaboration Leads to Global Sustainability

The traditional business paradigm encouraged companies to secure their assets by remaining isolated from other corporations. While businesses still must protect their products and designs, there is a sentiment today that appreciates the benefits that the world gains when all business subscribe to collaboration to solve global issues.

The catalyst for this shift is the fact that business collaboration is necessary in a socially sustainable world (from Mashable Social Media). The advent of the virtual world and the social media storm that ensued has demonstrated the revolutionary power that exists when people work together.

Certainly, businesses must operate with a certain level of autonomy Continue reading

Your Best Power Partners May be Right Down the Street

I came across a blog the other day written several years ago by Al Lautenslager for Entrepreneur.com.

He tells a story of walking into the dry cleaners and finding a $5-off coupon for the pizza joint a few doors away. Deciding to enjoy some pizza, he walks to the pizza place to redeem the coupon and there on the counter he finds a $5-off coupon for the dry cleaner. This might be called reciprocal marketing or, as Al suggests, fusion marketing. Whatever you call it, it makes sense.

Finding a power partner – Continue reading

How Collaboration Can Save Your Small Business

A small business starting up faces a lot of challenges, and many of those challenges are due to limited resources. Small businesses have to find creative ways to establish themselves as legitimate competition for their often much larger competitors, and somehow reach enough customers to not only maintain itself, but to grow as well. It’s a daunting situation, and according to a recent working paper from Harvard summarizes that it is harder for those just starting to succeed. But those that do succeed show an interesting trend in ideas: a lot of the success comes from some form of collaboration, either in the form of funding or in the form of ideas passed on to beginning entrepreneurs from their former employers.  But collaboration can go much deeper and be much more fulfilling than that.

Kimber Lanning’s “Roosevelt Row” in Phoenix, AZ is one inspirational example of how Continue reading