Mobilegeddon and Your Current Client Base

For any business owner with an online presence – and we think that is most of them – a major update has taken place within Google that we think you should be aware of. Some are calling it “Mobilegeddon” and it is drastically altering the way that website managers need to think about their sites. If you have not heard of this update, read on to find out how it could impact you, and what you can do to make sure your business keeps up with the competition.

Your Audience has gone Mobile

Up until about a year ago, most internet searches were conducted using a desktop computer or laptop. This meant people were logging into their computers and using their web browser to not only get all of the information that they needed, but also to act on that information. With the rise of smartphones and other mobile devices though, a shift has taken place. Now, more searches are being conducted through these mobile devices, along with the majority of web browsing. Before this shift business owners only needed to worry about how their website interacted with people on a computer. Now, the way a website looks and performs through a mobile device can be the difference between making a sale or losing a customer.

To keep up with this trend, Google has made a major alteration to its algorithm. It now places a larger emphasis on those sites that not only look better on mobile devices, but also have more people interacting with the website through a mobile device. This means that sites that are more compatible for the web, both in design and in functionality, will rank higher than those sites that are behind the trend.

Your Website Should be Mobile Friendly

If your site happens to be one of the ones that is not yet optimized for the web, there are a few things that you can do to correct this. First, you will want to focus on the design. Your website should conform to the screen that it is on, or there should be a separate design for people viewing the site on a mobile device. If you did not design your site yourself, speak to your designer about making sure that your site is viewable across all platforms. After that, you want to make sure that your site works well on mobile devices. Things like having large enough buttons to click on, and making sure they are far enough apart from one another, is just one example of things that Google is going to look for. Another thing that they will look for is if people are interacting with your mobile site.

According to AccuPOS.com, “Mobile payments are part of the overall solution.” You want to make it as easy as possible for people to make a purchase through your website while they are on their mobile device, and in doing so, Google will reward you for it. Google know if your visitors convert or not, and if they don’t like your mobile billing page, they will NOT convert.

The Mobilegeddon is just beginning. As mobile device become even more prominent, they are going to take on a larger importance in the eyes of Google and other search engines. Small business can greatly benefit from new technologies, and going mobile is one of them. Take the time now to see that your website is functioning on every platform possible to set yourself up for long term success. You don’t want to miss out on sales simply because your website doesn’t look great for a customer’s mobile phone.

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Social Entrepreneurs Ireland: Think Big, Act Now, Change Ireland

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland: Slow down. Take stock. Decelerate.

Not the typical thing you’d expect to hear from an organisation like Social Entrepreneurs Ireland perhaps. We are set up to scale the best solutions for social problems around Ireland. We support projects that have the potential to take an idea and replicate it elsewhere. After all, if we have found a solution to a problem in Wicklow, shouldn’t we be implementing this in other counties around Ireland? If we have found a more effective or more efficient way of doing something, shouldn’t more people benefit from the positive impact?

And it is a core trait of all entrepreneurs that they want to grow and develop their idea, to reach as many people as possible, to impact upon the world. As Steve Jobs said, entrepreneurs want to ‘make a dent in the universe’.

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland

At Social Entrepreneurs Ireland we love that attitude. Our slogan is ‘Think Big. Act Now. Change Ireland’ and it is because of this passion and the potential to significantly impact Ireland that we work with social entrepreneurs.

But over the last 10 years we have learned that all of this should come with a small note of caution. The rush to scale projects, to work with more people and to increase your impact, while totally understandable,  is potentially counter-productive. Our experience has taught us that often what some of the most exciting projects need is a period of deceleration before they can think seriously about acceleration.

Getting the Model Right

Before you can deliver a solution at scale, it is vital to delve deeply into the core service, product or solution that you are delivering. And once that is clear, the scaling model needs to be clearly developed and defined before starting to roll it out. We have seen it many times that early success is seized upon and attempts are made to replicate something before it is ready. And the danger is that a really powerful idea might fail and as a result be written off.

Is your model scalable? Is it sustainable? Can you replicate the core elements of it or is it dependent on the actions of a few key individuals? Do you have the capacity to deliver at a bigger scale?

At SEI we now take a lot of time at the beginning of the Awards Programme to work through all of these things with the entrepreneurs, and only move to scaling conversations once the fundamentals are in place.

Demands

Another challenge that we have seen in recent years is that big, exciting ideas often receive a huge amount of attention very quickly. In particular, projects led by young social entrepreneurs can receive a lot of interest from media, potential partners and supporters. While this support and coverage is potentially transformational for the entrepreneur, the risk is that they may become over-exposed, they may burn out, or they may just be distracted by all of the noise, events and attention, to the detriment of their projects. In these cases they may not fulfil the early potential that their projects have.

Learnings for SEI and for Social Entrepreneurs

Indeed, this is a challenging issue for us in SEI, as our Awards Programme celebrates these social entrepreneurs quite publicly. It is a constant challenge for us to find the right balance between protecting the social entrepreneurs and showcasing their work. I’m not sure we’ve always gotten it right but we are constantly working on it.

Over the years at SEI we have changed and adapted our approach and now have a much more nuanced approach to how we work with social entrepreneurs. We are very conscious that sometimes the best thing we can provide a project is to give thempermission to decelerate for a while, to take a breath, to take stock, to slow down, so that when they do choose to scale, they are ready to give it absolutely everything.

Darren

Darren Ryan, Chief Executive, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland

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It’s Not Rocket Science: Seeking Funding and Working with Research Institutes

God only knows how much money our respective states pump into research institutions every year to promote and stimulate the growth of R&D and support the knowledge economy. We, as SMEs, are entitled to our share if we have fundable projects. Enterprise support agencies such as Enterprise Ireland and Intertrade Ireland are key players in the R&D ecosystem and play a vital role in generating and nurturing innovation partnerships between Universities, research institutions and SMEs. Funding has always been available to support collaborations, especially for larger companies. And its now beginning to get interesting for smaller SMEs.

I’m writing, not as one of the founders of Smallbusinesscan, but as one of the founders of a new Science and Technology start up that over the past six months has benefited from key focused grants from the Irish State that has allowed the business to locate world class research in Cambridge University and in Cork Institute of Technology.

In this piece I’ll try and share some insights learned from our journey and, hopefully, it might help you if you go the route of trying to work with a large – and they’re all large – research institute.

A Typical Irish Story

First of all, the start of our company is a typically Irish story. We had 2 top physicists working in Cambridge, both Irish, meet for the first time on a new project and they said they’d go for a couple of pints! Over those few pints, the genesis of an idea was born. With their knowledge and skill sets in physics, photonics, fluidics, applied maths and machine learning software (yes they’re rocket scientists) combined with a something called spectroscopy and new developments in glass microchip design, they felt that realtime analysis of fluids was a probability and within reach. Anyone who knows anything about water testing, blood testing and even testing for pathogens in milk will know it’s a timely and costly endeavor with lots of expensive lab time need to grow, cultivate, slice and dice and shake samples to see what’s in the fluid being tested.

I got involved immediately because they rang me to see if the idea had legs. As someone that sold software into the water utility sector, I knew that finding ways to monitor and test water was big business. I also knew who to talk to, to see if the idea was a runner. It was.

Between the jigs and the reels we convinced Cambridge University’s Institute of Manufacturing that we had a very novel approach for the use of glass microchips and we’ve been working with them on producing smart chip designs.

My comfort zone is also Ireland Inc and I can navigate my way around the various supports available over here.

Local Enterprise Office

My first port of call was my Local Enterprise Office in Cork and after presenting a plan that we worked hard on, they agreed to match fund market research and proof of concept trials. We then sussed out all the various research institutes to see where we would carry out trials. Some were not as enthusiastic as I liked. Others engaged. A couple bent over backwards.

When I say we sussed them out, what I mean is that we did due diligence on them. We hit their websites (they could be better!), we asked around about other research collaborations, we met their heads of groups and their senior researchers, we had conference calls with 3 where we put them through their paces. To be honest we probably scared some off because to say the least we were pushy (possibly even arrogant). We tested them on their knowledge of the fields we were interested in and we challenged them on how much of their research had been spun out.

CIT Nimbus Centre

To cut a long story short we decided to carry out our first proof of concept in CIT. The guys in the CIT Nimbus centre (specialist group in embedded technologies) in particular were 1.) Hungry for our business and excited by what we were doing 2.) They had a dedicated water section with an advisory board of potential customers for our solution 3.)They had a new photonics lab with the equipment we needed and 4). Upstairs in the same lab they had a bio lab where we could grow our samples for testing.

Ok let’s pause here for some insights. The first few weeks with CIT were fraught. A big problem was the clash of cultures. I wanted our guys to get access to facilities over the weekends including Sundays. I wanted our guys to get access to equipment as and when they needed it, within reason and with notice. The guys in CIT could get us access on Saturdays – which involved their staff giving up one of their holidays over the weekend – but the buildings were just not available on Sundays. And free access was not on, even if our guys were world class scientists. CIT had insurance, public liability, equipment liability issues etc to deal with. As for long weekends…

But then things began to settle. People began to get to know people. Friendships began to develop. The team made up of our guys and CIT staff began to go the extra mile for each other. I, as a businessman, began to realize the potential of the CIT facilities that were available to our small start up – a photonics lab, a bio lab, a water institute, the Rubicon centre – all within 3-4 minutes walk of each other. We were inside the tent.

Our proof of concept worked beyond expectations…but where was the next pot of funding coming from?

Enterprise Ireland

Enter Enterprise Ireland. I had businesses that received Ei support in the past but we were revenue generating and exporting. I didn’t fully realize the supports that Ei were putting in place to support innovation. We were encouraged to look at the new Express Innovation Partnership which makes funding available to carry out specific research in a research institution.

We applied. After a pretty exhaustive due diligence, we got approval within 2 months. Now the process won’t suit all. 1.) We had to cough up some of our own money but then EI would match it 4 times over 2.) We had to do a full business plan because Ei had to understand the commercial possibilities before they made their decision 3.) We were put through our paces by a scientific evalulator and a commercial evaluator – who had their research done.

Seeking Funding

At this stage we were in bed with CIT but we also had to sort out IPR and commercial issues. If approved the funding would go to CIT to carry out research on our behalf. We had to make sure that our background IP was protected. CIT had to ensure that it got ROI for the state if any ip was generated by the project. So we agreed that our background ip was sacrosanct, that non severable ip generated by the project could be bought by our company and that severable ip could be used by both parties under pre agreed terms.

It all got sorted and we got approval for the grant. We are now sweating the CIT asset for all its worth. And perhaps they’re doing the same to us. We’re plugging into their network. We’re doing a H2020 bid together. We’re getting involved in a water cluster together. They’re getting access to other groups that we know in Cambridge and further afield and we’re providing contacts in big commercial organisations that CIT would hope to work for at some time in the future.

Need Advice

Now having said all that, if we’re here in another year we’ll have failed. We are not a research group. We are a commercial organization that is happening to do some research in CIT. And its my job as the commercial animal to leverage the CIT and other research groups relationships as much as possible and then get the hell out of Dodge into our own space asap.

I am happy to talk to anyone considering hooking up with a research institute. Send an email to smallbusinesscan and they’ll find me…hopefully not playing pool in the common room of CIT.

About the Author

Fionan Murray is co-founder Small Business Can. He was CEO of an international software business, which he led to global market leadership in operations management software. He completed the Leadership4Growth executive management course for Ireland’s high potential entrepreneurs at the Stanford Business School in California. He is a former Head of Marketing with KBC Bank and worked as a journalist in London specialising in finance and technology.

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Traits of a Successful Entrepreneur

Sadly, not all businesses that start end up remaining operational in the long haul. Part of the reason of the failure of most startups has to do with failing to understand the things that need to be done to guarantee success. If you ask the most successful entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic, Bill Gates of Microsoft or Larry Page of Google, what is the secret behind their success, these business leaders will tell you that you must be willing to do some things whether you like or not. Let’s look at some more traits of a successful entrepreneur.

The definition of success might differ from one business guru to another. However, one thing remains the same amongst the most successful entrepreneurs – they have common characteristics. The prudent thing is to place a check next to every characteristic you feel you possess. This helps you to evaluate how much you stack up. Although you do not have all of the characteristics, you should not fret. You can learn most of them through exercising patience and practice. You can also be among those in the top league by developing a winning attitude. This is especially true if you set and apply your goals through strategic planning.

Always do what you enjoy most

If you want to venture into business and are clueless about the type of business to start, just find out the exact thing that you love doing. Whatever you derive out of your business in form of enjoyment, stability, financial gain and personal satisfaction shall be the sum total of whatever you put into the business.

Therefore, if you do not enjoy whatever you are doing, then the likelihood is that you will find it necessary to assume that it will reflect in success of business or subsequent lack of it. Actually, if you do not enjoy what you do, chances are high that you will never succeed.

Always give whatever you are doing the seriousness it deserves

Sadly, most people start businesses without being serious. You cannot expect to enjoy success in business if you don’t believe in your business. For you to be successful and effective, you must be willing to give it the seriousness it deserves. Most home businesses for instance fail to take off because of lacking seriousness and passion. Home business owners are easily distracted. This leaves such a negative impact on the business. The failure to be motivated all through is also a recipe for disaster. You must be willing to keep your nose to the grindstone.

Don’t fall prey to the naysayers that obviously don’t take you seriously, because you work from home. These skeptics do not know that a good number of home based businesses that make quite some good income exist. Therefore, ignore them and do your thing.

Always plan everything

Failing to plan is planning to fail. Most entrepreneurs take this popular aphorism lightly. You should plan every aspect of your business including the minor details. Develop habits that you are willing to maintain no matter what. Business planning requires you to analyze every business situation. It also entails researching and compiling data and making conclusions based mainly on the facts revealed through research.

Your business plan also serves as a second function. It helps you have your goals on paper and on how to achieve them. With a business plan, you have a clear road map that will take you from one place to another. You use it as a yardstick to measure the success of all the individual segments of your business.

Always manage your money wisely

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business enterprise. You must purchase inventory, replace or repair equipment/tools, market or promote your business and pay for services among other countless things. For this reason, as a business owner, you must become a wise money manager. This ensures that you keep the cash of your business flowing. A wise money manager also pays all his bills in time. Two aspects of wise money management exist. These are:

  • The money you get from your clients in exchange for services and goods you provide
  • The money you use on your wages, supplies, inventory and other items required to keep the business in operation

The customer is your reason for existence – it is all about the customer

Most entrepreneurs forget that they exist because of the clients. They even go ahead to produce classy and stylish products. Even if your products are the flashiest in the market, and they don’t meet the needs and wants of your customers, then be sure that you are heading nowhere. Remember that you are in business not to beat your competition, but to satisfy the needs of your customers. Your business should revolve only around your clients or customers, period!

After all, aren’t the customers who inform your need to go into business or not? Everything you do and every decision you make should be customer focused. This includes your website, promotional campaigns, advertising campaigns, presentations, operating hours, payment options, warranties, and policies. Moreover, you must be in the know of exactly who your customers are, upside down and inside out.

Project nothing short of a positive business image

You only have a passing moment to make a memorable and positive impression on all the people you intend to do business with. You must always go out of your way to make a conscious effort to project a professional business image. You must be willing to do anything it takes to create an impressive image of your company. By maintaining a professional image of your business, there is no doubt that people will take your seriously and you will in turn enjoy considerable profits.

The above top tips will help your business perform exceptionally both in the long and short run.

Bio

Charlie is one of the most successful writer when it comes to matters entrepreneurship. He is the author of one of New York’s best sellers on start ups. Talk to him today about national debt reviews.

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Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing

Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing: Although the disciplines of sales and marketing seem to share similar backgrounds, one might be surprised at the lack of internal communication between the sales and marketing teams of many small businesses. In many unsuccessful companies, there is definitely a gap between sales and marketing. Here are some of the best ways that companies have fixed this gap in the past.

1 – Connect the rewards of both departments to each other

The different pay scales that many sales and marketing departments have serve as a divide in many small businesses. Sales is a results based profession that depends on great marketing, but sales can also blame marketing for a downturn. Marketing is usually a more salaried position, but it can blame sales if its material seems to fall flat.

If the pay of both departments are linked, then both sides will have plenty of incentive to work together. The influence will create a bond that will not allow either side to completely blame the other if an idea falls flat. Ideas will also be much less likely to fall flat, because they will be tested in the real world of sales rather than on the chalkboard in the marketing department.

2 – Create opportunities for crossovers in between departments

In both departments, you likely have people who are interested in what is across the wall. Give those people the ability to move between departments and study the discipline on the other side. This will increase morale and create personal bonds that will allow for more efficiency and synergy between departments.

You can also make it your business to reward the employees who are able to take an idea from the drawing board all the way to a conversion. In other words, the people who master the entire process will be rewarded financially as well as operationally within the company. Do not be afraid to give people the opportunity to expand their own palettes without your express permission. The final result that you want is results, and sometimes you get this when you let people think for themselves and follow their hearts in their professions!

3 – Facilitate the lines of communication within your company

Too often, the sales and the marketing team are kept completely apart. The sales team is on the phone all day, with the marketing team coming up with ideas that they foist onto the unsuspecting sales team in the middle of the workday. This can engender a great deal of misinterpreted energy.

Even if you do not have employees who necessarily want to jump to either department, you should definitely have people who are empowered to discuss future changes in the program before they become law. There should never be a program from the marketing department that is placed without warning on the heads of the sales team. At the same time, the sales team should be held responsible for any marketing campaign that they do not take to heart.

Having a single liaison to handle internal communications may work best for smaller companies as long as that person is respected on both ends of the equation. The message will not get confused between parties, nor will it take a long time to deliver to the appropriate leaders in each department.

Once the sales and the marketing team get on the same page, the sky is literally the limit. Sales and marketing in sync form a positive feedback loop that help to increase the efficiency of the entire company and the ROI in each individual department action. Take the tips above to heart if you are having trouble marrying the dynamic between your sales department and your marketing team.

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What Does a Conservative Government Mean for Small Business

For better or for worse, the Conservative government achieved a majority vote this election. For business owners, it will probably come as no surprise that things are about to get a lot easier for us financially and legislatively. But just what have the Conservative party promised for small businesses? Let’s take a look at how their policies will help us in the coming years.

Conservative Government Boosting Start-Ups

The Conservative party are aiming to boost the number of start-ups every year to 600,000 by 2020. They will be reviewing the benefits available for the self-employed and trebling the start-up loan programme. Also, to encourage entrepreneurs further, they are aiming to invest more money into superfast broadband, so people can easily conduct their business from the comfort of their home.

Slashing Red Tape

Many businesses complain that red tape, such as regulations and paperwork, costs them time and money. The Conservatives are planning on drastically reducing the regulations restricting business, in the hope that it will save billions of pounds every year. Businesses will have more freedom to do what they like.

Hiring and Firing Rights

With a Conservative government in power, the rights and power will move from employees to employers. It’s likely that companies will be allowed to hire and fire at will, without fear of ramifications, under a proposal called Beecroft, which was previously quashed by the Liberal Democrats. Employment tribunals will become even more obsolete, and it will mean that any employees that aren’t pulling their weight can be quickly replaced.

Europe?

There is a big question mark over whether we will remain a part of the European Union or not. This subject divides business owners, so you may think that this is actually a negative, depending on your company and its goals. Either way, Europe is going to be a big deal after this election – do you want to stay in, or do you think we should leave?

Late Payments

Late payments are a huge problem for small businesses in the UK. It massively interrupts cash flow and can cause serious issues – in fact, many companies go out of business because of late payments alone. The Conservative party will look at ways that we can legislate against late payments effectively. It isn’t doing the economy any favours and it should tighten up our fiscal processes.

Although this is an important governmental step, if you have experienced cash flow problems and you are unsure how best to react, this getting paid on time guide should help provide clear guidance on how to deal with such a scenario.

Investment in Infrastructure

Infrastructure will receive some much needed funding, to make it easier for businesses to meet up with their clients. In particular, a rail line will be built from Birmingham to London, which is great news for anyone living there. This will also help to spread the wealth from our capital city, out towards other cities in the UK. Freelancers and the self-employed will particularly benefit from this.

Cut Taxes

Wealthy business owners will rejoice when they hear that, yes, Osborne plans to cut taxes for businesses, in order to help them flourish. This will also encourage other large companies to set up shop in the UK, further boosting the country’s economy.

Are you happy that the Conservatives were elected? Let us know in the comments below.

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Business Metrics Every Startup Should Watch

While modern marketing methods have evolved over the last 20 years, there are still some tried and true business metrics that still work just as well as ever. If you’re not using them, you’re missing the boat.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost is the metric that matters the most if you’re a young startup. It refers to how much money you’re spending to acquire a customer. To calculate your cost, divide your sales and marketing costs (including overhead expenses) for a given period by the number of new customers you brought on board during that same time.

A high customer acquisition cost means you’re spending too much money to get those customers. You need to lower those costs to improve profits and, ultimately, create a sustainable business.

If you’re using something like this lead management software, measuring and monitoring acquisition costs should be pretty straightforward and simple.

Retention

Retention is something that usually gets thrown to the wayside because most businesses are obsessed with controlling customer acquisition that they start looking for any way to cut costs associated with customers – including retention.

But, this metric is important in and of itself. It tells you a lot about how much it costs to keep customers as opposed to getting new ones.

Some businesses spend 7 to 10 times more to acquire a new customer vs keeping existing customers.

These costs are calculated similarly to the way you calculate new business except that you use existing customers when you do the math.

Focus on current customers and what you can do to make them more satisfied. Next, work on customers who have stopped using your product or slowed their use of it. Ask them why they no longer do business with you. You may be surprised by the answer they give.

Attrition

Attrition is a metric that tells you how many people stop using your product. You want this number as low as possible. Most startups measure churn at 30 days. Some measure it every 90 days.

You will lose customers, and for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of your product. It just happens. What you should focus on is what a profitable level of loss is for your company.

Lifetime Customer Value

The lifetime value of a customer is another important metric as it clues you in to the long-term profit potential of your business. How long do you expect customers to do business with you? Take that number and multiply it by the monthly revenue you expect to receive from that customer. That’s your customer’s Lifetime Value.

If your customer acquisition cost is higher than the customer’s lifetime value, well then you have an unsustainable business model and you will fail.

Referral Business

This metric measures how many referrals your company is getting. It also tells you whether your business survives on pushing its message out to the marketplace or whether it pulls business in of its own “gravity.”

Most companies will tell you that marketing is expensive, and if you stop, the traffic stops. Having referral-driven business makes it so much easier because the leads just keep coming in regardless of what you do.

So, don’t forget to measure this metric and try to improve it over time. When this metric improves, you’ll notice your costs going down and customer satisfaction scores improving.

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Queens University: Dragons Den

Lights, Camera, Action…..Queens University: Dragons Den

Head of Mid-Ulster and Fermanagh Business Centre Shauna Burns recounts her recent experience as a judge on Queen’s University’s Dragons Den, where enterprising local students faced a grilling as they pitched for new investment…

IT bench marking for the agriculture sector; concierge for the nomadic digital community; medical diagnostic devices ; chargers for electric cars – these were just a few of the ideas from Northern Irelands brightest young students at the final of QUB Dragons Den last week.

The basement of Elmwood Hall was transformed into a film set just like the real Dragons Den, with the 11 final businesses pitching for £5,000 investment. Myself and the other Dragons, Philip Bain (Director, Shredbank), Nancy Brown (business consultant and entrepreneur), John McKee (Chief Executive, Linkubator),and David Bradshaw (Client Executive, Invest Northern Ireland) were given an insight to the future. We saw not just students with ideas but with ambition and with products that were ready for the market.

It was truly inspiring to see that the future of Northern Ireland economic growth is in the hands of people with such diverse and innovative ideas. I believe that all of them will become leading entrepreneurial figures and business people of the future.

Winner: SleepState Labs

As judges we faced a tough decision as the standard was so high but ultimately we decided on one winner – SleepState Labs who won the full £5k investment for their sleep detecting mobile application. Each finalist also received 12 months business accommodation at QUB, which will hopefully enable them to evolve their businesses..

Across Northern Ireland, Ulster Bank encounters many new and exciting business ideas and one of the refreshing challenges I find is helping turn those ideas into reality. Our dedicated start-up proposition is a great tool to help us do this, and this has given me even more motivation to get out and support local enterprise.

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thinkbusiness

Ultimate Human Performance; Using Flow as a Business Tool

In this post we’ll investigate how using flow (ultimate focus) can be useful in business and how it can lead to the ultimate human performance.

We have always had an interest in the power of the human mind. Which goes beyond being mindful, but moves also into the paranormal, spirituality, neuroscience, hypnosis, auras, chakras, Tao, physics., science fiction, gaming and more relevant to business, performance, decision making and strategy.

Vision and decision making

Core elements in business are always visioning (=strategy) and first, second and maybe third stage thinking (=decision making). Both impact on performance. Inspired by Jack Black’s “Mindstore” and after reading “Bold”, I decided to pick up “The rise of superman”.

Flow

Which is all about finding Csikszentmihalyi’s flow. In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof.

The advertisement for flow

Flow naturally transforms a weakling into a muscleman, a sketcher into an artist, a dancer into a ballerina, a plodder into a sprinter, an ordinary person into someone extraordinary. Everything you do, you do better in flow, from baking a chocolate cake to planning a vacation to solving a differential equation to writing a business plan to playing tennis to making love. Flow is the doorway to the ‘more’ most of us seek.

More advertisement for flow

From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.Flow directly correlates to happiness at work and happiness at work directly correlates to success. A decade of research in the business world proves happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31 percent, and accuracy on tasks by 19 percent, as well as a myriad of health and quality-of-life improvements.

Extreme athletes and flow

Yep, it is an advertisement for flow. Steven Kotler uses the extreme athletes as the medium to tell the story of flow and what we can learn. In their case it is very simple. Extreme athletes take huge risks. Risk narrows the focus very rapidly. It’s flow or die. Literally. But what these athletes do, is showing what flow can do. Performance goes through the roof and it is iterative. One builds on the other. In between a lot of those athletes die. But they don’t care. Because they live life by the fullest. A fantastic quote from the book; “It is not often that Death is told so clearly to fuck off.”

You don’t have to be an extreme athlete

You don’t have to risk life and limb to achieve the same. The book itself is a rush. And you can learn how to get in your own flow. Like being mindful, flow is another route to happiness. Csikszentmihalyi discovered that the happiest people on earth, the ones who felt their lives had the most meaning, were those who had the most peak experiences.

Getting into the flow

So what do you need. You need risk, you need a rich environment, you need novelty and unpredictability, you need self knowledge, you need purpose, you need a challenge, you need skills, you need clear goals and you need action. Which where flow is different from meditation. You can only get into flow by doing something. It works on individual as well as collective level. This leads to focussed activity. Focused activity produced a significant reward: it alters consciousness, creating experiences very similar to “mystical.”

Goals

Goals are particularly important. When the brain is charged with a clear goal, focus narrows considerably, the unimportant is disregarded, and the now is all that’s left. Just as important, in the now, there’s no past or future and a lot less room for self — which are the three intruders most likely to yank us to the then.When goals are clear, metacognition is replaced by in-the-moment cognition, and the self stays out of the picture Applying this idea in our daily life means breaking tasks into bite-size chunks and setting goals accordingly.

Groups

In a group setting these goals need to be shared. You need familiarity, blending egos, a sense of control, close listening and an always say yes rule, our final trigger, means interactions should be additive more than argumentative.

Group flow

Group flow is a social unifier and social leveler, creating what cultural anthropologists call “communitas” — that deep solidarity and togetherness that results from shared transcendent experiences. That’s why people who seek out group flow often join startups or work for themselves. Serial entrepreneurs keep starting new business as much for the flow experience, as for the additional success

What happens in flow

You develop a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness: The merging of action and awareness. From the explicit brain system to the implicit brain system. Extremely fluid brain control. Gamma brain waves. The appearance of the Voice, the voice of intuition — the center of the zone’s mystery. Carl Jung defined intuition as “perception via the unconscious” and the Voice is the end result of that perception — the unconscious mind broadcasting its perceptions to the conscious mind.

The amygdala (fight, freeze or flight) switched off. Transient hypofrontality and quieting of doubt. The unstuck in time. Ultimate focus. This is also why the Voice comes through so clearly in a flow state. With self, time, and space erased from the picture, all explicit complexity is edited out. It’s not that the Voice is turned up louder in the zone, it’s that everything that stands between us and the message is removed from the picture. The ultimate experience and in some way connected to “Infinite possibilities”, which is all about creating the ultimate experience.

Dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamide and serotoninThese five chemicals are flow’s mighty cocktail. The same cocktail mentioned in “Out of our minds” and the cocktail created by immersive games. Video-game players get into flow so frequently that Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas have become the most widely accepted theoretical framework for explaining the lure of the joystick. Studies have shown that the amount of flow generated by a video game directly correlates to everything from player engagement to overall product success.

The business case for flow

“Because flow involves meeting challenges and developing skills,” explains Csikszentmihalyi “it leads to growth. In the state, we are aligned with our core passion and, because of flow’s incredible impact on performance, expressing that passion to our utmost”. In 2007, South Korean researchers looking at e-learning (electronic games, Web-based learning tools, and electronic tutoring) discovered significant correlation between flow and positive learning attitudes and outcomes.

Neuroelectrically, flow’s baseline brain-wave pattern of low alpha/high theta also boosts creativity, which is the essential skill for CEOs. McKinsey established that executives in flow are five times more effective than their steady-state peers.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have found that from the marketing side of this coin, online flow experiences attract customers, mitigate price sensitivity, and positively influence subsequent buying behaviours.

Creativity and cooperation are so amplified that Greylock partner venture capitalist James Slavet, in a recent article for Forbes.com, called “flow state percentage” — defined as the amount of time employees spend in flow — the “most important management metric for building great innovation teams.” Because flow is the hallmark of high performance. When we watch a live concert or a traditional sports event, we’re essentially paying to watch people in a flow state.

When performance peaks in groups there is a collective merger of action and awareness, a group flow. As a result, in group flow, spontaneity, cooperation, communication, creativity, productivity, and overall performance all go through the roof

Time-based accounting (paying people for hours worked) needs to be replaced by flow-based accounting (paying people for the amount of time they spend in flow at work). What matters is not the amount of time you’re present, but the amount of time that you’re working at your full potential.

The ultimate reason

Flow helps you learn faster. And the ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

Bookbuzz

From a Bookbuzz perspective reading “Thinking fast and slow”, “The future of the mind”, “Coherence”, “Carrots and sticks don’t work”, “The shallows”, “Out of our minds”, “Bioteams”, “Reinventing organisations” and many, many other books, it seems that it is all coming together.

Flow will become the ultimate motivator. It captures everything. Purpose, meaning, learning, happiness, productivity, creativity, speed, left brain, right brain, product and service design and ultimately business success. Companies will not only get Klout scores, they will get flow scores. Helping and training to achieve and apply flow. Very happy companies, with very happy staff with very happy customers.

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