Observations on SEAL Team leadership: The team

Washington Business Journal by Ingar Grev, January 31, 2012

The Navy SEALs are run by great leaders. And the SEALs are the best at what they do because they are a team – not a bunch of incredibly well trained men who only follow the micromanaging orders of the person in charge...

How a vacation transformed Jim Garland’s business

Washington Business Journal by Ingar Grev, February 27, 2012

When I ask business leaders what it means to have a strategy-driven business, or what it means to be a strategic business owner, I mostly get responses that it’s nice to have a strategy, but it’s not really that important. My observation is that this is driven by their past attempts to create and implement strategies. Since those attempts almost always fail to make any impact on their business, they give it up as some kind of academic exercise that is irrelevant in the real world.

Growing a business is tough when you’re losing customers

Washington Business Journal by Ingar Grev, March 20, 2012

After making some modifications to our home security system in 2011, our monthly fee went from about $25 a month to about $38. After paying that fee consistently for over a year, my most recent automatic payment was over 50 percent higher, an unexpected – and unexplained – increase. Around the same time, I had stopped receiving e-mail notifications that my alarm was armed, disarmed, etc...

Your technology is great, but does anyone want to buy it?

Washington Business Journal by Ingar Grev, April 11, 2012

One of the biggest challenges facing most small tech companies is the inability to take their eyes off of their technology long enough to focus on the marketplace. “If we build it, they will come” works for Kevin Costner, but for the rest of us it can lead to great deal of disappointing business performance.  The problem is that even though we might know a great deal about our technology, we simply don’t know as much as we think we do about our marketplace.

Great technology development starts with great market research

Washington Business Journal by Ingar Grev. April 16, 2012

 

I decided to build on my recent technology marketing post by asking the speaker for next week’s National Capital Region Entrepreneurs Forum – Mark Dumas – if he had any pearls of wisdom that he wanted to share with tech entrepreneurs/CEOs.  A little about Mark: He started SPADAC Inc. in 2002 and sold it for $46 million eight years later to GeoEye Inc.

Exceptional customer experience is a supercharger, but it’s not Rock-It science

Washington Business Journal by Ingar Grev. May 14, 2012

 

Last year, I responded to a Groupon promotion for a cool-looking portable audio device called Rock-It. This little speaker was definitely as cool as it looked, but I unfortunately broke it during a business trip last November. Since the warranty expired, I sent a request through the company’s website to see if it was possible to get it repaired. Mike Szymczak, the co-founder of the company, replied back and told me that he’ll just send me a new one.