Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Archives for August 2018

In the new Age, the Force is with the customer

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Earth, Stardate 8507 (The Age of the Seller)

Once upon a time, in a galaxy that today must seem far, far away, sellers controlled all information about their products, services and innovations. Consequently, customers learned what they needed to know from salespeople, who traveled far and wide dispensing information to, and collecting sales from, grateful and beholden customers.

If one had observed such a meeting, the customer would have nodded his head in wonderment as the salesperson revealed the virtual magic that was his product.  And in this land, the Force—control and availability of information—was with the seller.

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Are you prepared for the inevitable business disruption?

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This week marks an ignominious anniversary. On August 13, 2003, a single outage in the electric grid cascaded across eight northeastern states, putting 55 million people in the dark for days, and thousands of businesses out of business. The Great Blackout of ’03 was a catastrophic reminder that we’re all one nosy squirrel in a transformer away from an instantaneous, put-you-out-of-business event.

Fifteen years later, the evidence isn’t in favor of less exposure for the next 15. Consider this report from CNBC: “The FBI warned Russian computer hackers had compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers.” And this one from the Department of Homeland Security: “Russian government cyber actors have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, nuclear and commercial facilities, since at least March 2016.”

In 2003, most businesses surveyed reported they weren’t unaware of a potential business disruption, but incredibly, they also admitted they weren’t prepared for one. Thankfully, that response is different these days, as one of our recent online polls indicated.

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There’s nothing small about small business trade

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By now, most people aren’t surprised to learn that small business in America is actually quite big.

You’ve heard the stats from the U.S. Small Business Administration that there are over 27 million small firms representing 99.7% of all U.S. employers. And I love reminding that these little powerhouses sign the front of half of all private sector paychecks and produce about the same percentage of our nation’s GDP. Pretty impressive.

But here’s a 21st century stat that begs the next question: With 94% of the world’s customers outside of our borders, what’s the impact of trade on small business? You might be surprised to learn that, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, small businesses represent 98% of all U.S. exporters, producing about one-third of total export value. However, considering that all U.S. exporters number less than 300,000, it’s easy math to see that small exporters are a fraction of the total Main Street machine.

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