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| CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE | |
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Dear business leader,
Growth is success. Fast-growing businesses are more fun to work for, attract more investors, have the best-rated CEOs, and get the most favorable media coverage. Frost & Sullivan is here to help your business grow. This letter is a quick guide to give you some ideas on how to maximize the value you will get from integrating Frost & Sullivan's Growth Partnership Services into your business strategy.
If you are serious about accelerating the growth of your company, then we want to coach you on how to optimally integrate your time and energy into this growth stimulation process. A small amount of your focused time is all that is needed to make a huge impact on the growth of your firm and the success of this partnership.
1. DEVELOP A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Globalization of the world economy is gaining speed and making business riskier every year. Ever since the collapse of the Cold War economy commenced in 1989 and the race to a global market economy began, it has become increasingly shortsighted to segment markets by individual nations. In order to maximize your company's growth rate and ensure its survival, you must develop a global perspective on the markets in which you compete.
Frost & Sullivan has developed a team of market consultants and research analysts who are also global industry experts. This team not only provides global coverage of the marketplace, but also--more importantly--gives you a global perspective on the market. Without this new viewpoint, companies are at great risk of missing growth opportunities and at greater risk of being forced out of business entirely. In the fast-paced international business world of today, it is no longer enough to focus on a domestic strategy.
2. DEMAND PARTICIPATION, INVOLVEMENT, AND INTEGRATION
It is absolutely critical that you integrate Growth Partnership Services into all your departments, divisions, and project teams in your company. Without 100 percent integration, the full benefits and value from teamwork, improved decision-making, and creativity will not be realized. Key must-integrate titles are management, marketing, sales, business development, market research, research and development, competitive intelligence, information specialists, and corporate strategy.
3. GET PERSONALLY INVOLVED WITH THE CLIENT COUNCIL PROCESS
The client council process is a critical methodology for ensuring that the future flow of your market's research matches your strategic decision-making needs. Client councils are arranged periodically between your team and Frost & Sullivan to discuss challenges, new opportunities, disruptive technologies, or other issues with which your team needs support. Your participation makes these meetings considerably more powerful and is a key element in changing the growth culture within your firm.
4. LEVERAGE THE GLOBAL FROST & SULLIVAN STAFF
Our global team of market research analysts and industry experts becomes your team, and the value to you is maximized when you leverage the entire global Frost & Sullivan team to your benefit. This can be done by actively scheduling team-on-team interactions to discuss new ideas, innovations, products, and challenges. Trust and confidentiality is the key to beginning innovative growth processes. Our team has new perspectives on markets, technologies, and geographic regions.
Frost & Sullivan has over 40 global offices with more than 1,800 industry analysts and consultants. Our mission is to research and analyze new market opportunities for corporate growth. We are the world leader in growth consulting and the integrated areas of technology research, market research, economic research, corporate best practices, training, customer research, competitive intelligence, and corporate strategy.
5. DEVELOP A GROWTH CULTURE THROUGH CHANGE LEADERSHIP
To develop a growth culture where none exists is an enormous challenge. Creating a sense of urgency and a clear vision, developing growth teams, opening communication, expanding an attitude of empowerment and leadership by example, pushing your team, raising the bar, and setting goals are all part of your role in change leadership. The Frost & Sullivan Partnership will maximize the value of this new culture.
6. LEVERAGE THE TEAM METHODOLOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING
This is a powerful concept that you should make an indispensable part of your company's analytical and decision-making process. TEAM is a methodology, a comprehensive review of all research categories to minimize risk in the decision-making process. It integrates the essential research elements of Technology, Economic/demographics, Analytical application tools to support decision-making, and Markets (competitor and customer research). Once you see how this improves the speed and accuracy of decisions, you will make the TEAM Methodology a standard decision-making system at your company.
7. SHIFT FROM INFORMATION COLLECTION TO STRATEGIC OPTIONS AND ACTION
As companies become larger, there is a trend away from innovation and strategy to simple data collection. More and more members of the management team are concerned with monitoring data and maintaining the current business at status quo. Growth Partnership Services reverses this trend. We look for strategic options, applications, implications, innovation, and best-in-class growth acceleration ideas. Data collection and databases will not help you grow--Growth Partnership Services will!
8. SCHEDULE PERIODIC GROWTH CONSULTING WORKSHOPS
Implement a series of Growth Consulting Workshops with the Frost & Sullivan growth consulting team. These workshops will stimulate your team into an in-depth critical analysis of all the opportunities available and how to prioritize them in order to optimize future growth. Your firm probably has a long list of investment opportunities. Some of these possibilities have great potential and some do not. These workshops will provide your team with a foundation that will enable you to measure, analyze, and prioritize them based on their overall growth potential.
9. CEO COMMITMENT: INSPIRE THE TEAM TO FOCUS ON GROWTH
Take direct responsibility for making this plan a success. Communicate the partnership to all employees. Outline your role in the partnership and show why it makes sense for your company. Make it crystal clear how important it is for management to focus on growth--what it means to you and them both personally and professionally.
10. CREATE A TRAINING BUDGET TO PROVIDE YOUR TEAM WITH THE SKILLS IT TAKES TO CREATE A GROWTH CULTURE
The training required to develop a "growth culture" in your firm is unique and not available from books or training companies. Growth culture training is powerful and essential for success. Earmark a corporate budget to be spent on this training. Creating a growth culture is a complex and difficult task.
11. BUDGET FOR A DEDICATED FROST & SULLIVAN CONSULTANT TO FOCUS ON YOUR COMPANY
Investing in a dedicated Frost & Sullivan growth consultant is a nominal expense to ensure that your team and the Frost & Sullivan representative are working well together to maximize the growth potential of your company. This consultant would be dedicated to your team to leverage the global Frost & Sullivan perspective on a full-time basis.
12. BECOME AN EXTRAORDINARY COMPANY BY DEVELOPING EXTRAORDINARY GOALS
In many years of benchmarking world-class companies, we have learned that extraordinary companies have extraordinary goals. Mediocre companies in turn have mediocre goals. Where does your company set goals? To set extraordinary goals you will need to know where to place the bar. Where is the market? What are the benchmarks? Where should we be? Setting goals based on last year's performance is not ambitious. Our Partnership team works directly with your team to set your goals on par with the optimized growth culture.
13. BROADEN YOUR TEAM'S INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
An overly narrow focus on your specific market segment or technology puts your company at risk. In order to minimize this risk you must broaden your industry perspective. Encourage your team to understand and analyze the entire industry for growth opportunities--not just the segment you compete in. Frost & Sullivan is an ideal partner here because we analyze the entire industry for growth opportunities, such as new technologies, emerging market segments, new customer applications, and expanding geographic markets.
14. EMPOWER AN INTERNAL CHAMPION
Identify a strong up-and-coming leader who understands the potential power and impact of the partnership with Frost & Sullivan. Avoid any "wandering" executives who don't have enough to do or are being shuffled around the organization. Look for a great communicator, team builder, and risk taker. This is a fantastic opportunity to develop future leadership talent.
David Frigstad
Chairman
Frost & Sullivan
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