Founders be aware

Founders pushed out
George Osborne happily announced this week if he were chancellor, a national Dragons’ Den style system would be introduced to help entrepreneurs find investment for their businesses.
Unless you’re spectacularly wealthy, or happen to have stumbled upon an extremely cash generative idea, you’ll probably need some kind of outside cash injection to grow your business rapidly.
Dealing with investors is often a major challenge for entrepreneurs and one, it seems, that continues long after you’ve signed over an equity stake.
New research from the European Leadership Programme (ELP) found only one in every 10 company founders are allowed to remain as chief execs following venture capital investment.
To address that figure another way, for every 100 businesses that receive significant VC funding, 90 entrepreneurs are pushed out of the driving seat.
Of the entrepreneurs surveyed, 35% said high expectations of investors was the main factor in a split.
“Many companies bring in a new CEO in the hope that they can turn around an under-performing business, but often this doesn’t solve their problems,” said Ashley Ward, founder of the ELP.
“Most of these investors give a CEO less than a year to prove themselves which suggests they think a company can recover in less than 12 months, but this is usually unrealistic, and changing the CEO again results in time lost searching for a replacement and bringing them up to speed.”
A word of warning for entrepreneurs that want to hang onto their baby after receiving funding: choose your investors as carefully as they choose their investments.

Slainte

Gordon

Ideas are the life blood off your company

The moment new ideas stop being used in a company the company has died, this is an article that may help you get thoese creative processess functioning again.

Ideas Don’t Always Have to Die
Ideas do not always survive. Sometimes they are forgotten, discarded or never make it beyond the initial stages of discussion. There are plenty of reasons why ideas die.
For instance, an idea might die when:…the idea is attacked by a certain number of people.…the idea isn’t responded to with enthusiasm or passion.…the cost of trialing the idea is too expensive and there are other priorities demanding funds.…the idea is deemed too risky.…there is no one in a senior position to champion the idea.…there is a lack of feasibility attached to the idea at the initial stage.…there are power struggles between those promoting the idea and those opposing it.…the idea is thought to be too similar to an older idea or the same as something already in place.…there is a change of circumstances, or strategy is adjusted which lessens the value of the idea.…an idea is deemed a failure after being tried out for the first time.
There might be many other reasons to add to the list above.

Too often, an idea dies and it is forgotten and never looked at again. But it might be worthwhile to review these ‘dead’ ideas periodically.
If an idea offers some value then it is worthwhile assessing it from time to time in order to see if the value can be delivered or if the value is perhaps even more significant.
You have concepts of delivery and concepts of value. As in all types of creativity, there is an importance in extracting and defining the concept that seems to be in use for the new idea.If the concept of delivery is outlined, this concept can then be challenged and an alternative way of providing the same value can be found. If the concept of value is made apparent, then there could be other forms of value that arise from this basic concept.
An idea can die for whatever reason, but the concept behind the idea does not need to die at the same time. The concept could survive, with an effort being made to see how it might be delivered through a practical idea.
If an idea fails to survive then an attempt should be made to spell out exactly why that idea has died. It could be because of the cost of the idea, or is it a matter of implementation? It could be because of a lack of feasibility and practicality, or is it a matter of risk? It could be a matter of low value. In practice, ideas often die because of a combination of several different factors.
Perhaps there is low motivation for the idea. That is always difficult to admit.

By Edward de Bono is the world's leading authority in the field of creative thinking and the teaching of thinking as a skill.

PS: my peave of the day...folk who do not have the xxxxx to use there real name when they try to post comments which are never positve on someone elses blog, just "Anonymous" they must have a sorry life