From Business Failure to Business Opportunity

This is a great story, showing how one can turn business failure into business lesson!

The story of George and Mary Ann Clark!They have a great product – carbonated milk – but have struggled mightily in making a thriving company out of it. Fully 10 years after they opened for business, the Clarks finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The Clarks invented a fantasy beverage for kids and parents: real milk that is carbonated like a soft drink! And now their e-Moo and RPM (Refreshing Power Milk) product lines – in fun flavors like Bubble Gum and Orange Sparkle – have made their way into 31 school districts, serving tens of thousands of students, around the United States.
But their company, Mac Farms Inc., could be so much more than it is. Only now do the Clarks believe that they’re solidly on a path to long-term success. “It would have been easy to give up, but this wasn’t just a blind labor of love,” says George, who is 72 years old. “There was clearly a market need out there and also a market opportunity, and we were given a unique chance to solve the problem.”

The appeal of a genuine dairy beverage with soft-drink bubbles would seem to be a no-brainer. But it still took about a half-million dollars to get off the ground. The Clarks were willing to invest much of their life savings, but they needed more capital. So George made a move that can be successful for startups: seeking business financing from a potential supplier. The dairy-farmer members of St. Albans Cooperative Creamery in Vermont – the same savvy organization that once bankrolled another startup called Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream – ponied up because they saw the potential for e-Moo to increase fluid-milk sales.

George sees now that he and Mary Ann made a crucial mistake right out of the gate: they failed to line up enough outside capital for the company, which forced them to rent an existing production facility in Cooperstown, NY. The results were potentially devastating on two fronts. First, the market readily bought in to the Clark’s concept, but they proved unable to satisfy the demand. And second, during the early stages, when the innovative nature of e-Moo was starting to attract news-media attention from all over the country, the Clarks couldn’t take full advantage of the public relations spotlight due to that inability to keep up with orders.

Keep reading on how they managed to turn this failure into success: http://www.startupnation.com/articles/1236/1/business-failure-opportunity.asp

Visual Brainstorming

Apart from the 'traditional' brainstorming sessions, there are other ways to create innovative ideas. Visual brainstorming, that is brainstorming with images, objects and actions frequently works spectacularly well.

'The ugly truth about brainstorming is that more often than not it leads to mediocre results. In fact, if you've been involved in brainstorming sessions, you've probably experienced more than your share of events in which few truly creative ideas were suggested.
There are several reasons why a brainstorming session might fail to generate great creative ideas.
1. Badly formulated challenge. Any proper brainstorming event starts with a creative challenge that is the focus for idea generation. Unfortunately, few people appreciate how important a well formulated challenge is. They'd rather go right to the idea generation part of the brainstorming. Unfortunately, if you get the challenge wrong, the best ideas in the world probably will not solve your problem.
2. Poor facilitation. Even trained facilitators who do not understand creative problem solving (CPS) are often unable to manage properly a brainstorming event.
3. Squelching. Criticising ideas during the idea generation phase of brainstorming demotivates everyone. It tells participants that wacky ideas will get you in trouble. The thing is: the wackiest ideas are the most creative. So, any squelching basically communicates to participants that creative ideas are not wanted. And participants oblige by suggesting uninspiring and predictable ideas.
4. Dominating personalities. If one person dominates the brainstorming session, her ideas inevitably become the focus and other participants' ideas are pushed to the side. Unfortunately, this means that only one person is really doing any brainstorming - and that makes nonsense of bringing a brainstorming group together. Worse, dominating people are usually more interested in power than in discovering the best ideas.
5. Topic fixation. When someone suggests an obviously good idea in a brainstorming event, other people tend to focus on similar ideas. The result is that other avenues of possibility are ignored.
6. Too much noise. In a good brainstorming event, a lot of people are sharing ideas loudly. That means everyone has to listen to other ideas before sharing their own. The result is more time and energy is spent on listening and interpreting than ideas than on generating ideas. Worse, quiet or shy people tend to keep to themselves when brainstorming gets noisy - so you lose their ideas.
The bad news is that one any of these flaws can spoil a brainstorming event and lead to poor, unimaginative ideas. The good news is that non-verbal brainstorming -- based on images, objects, actions or any combination of these -- not only avoids almost all of the flaws listed above, but seems more reliably to result in better, more usable ideas. '

Visual Brainstorming
'Visual brainstorming is about collaboratively generating ideas without using the spoken or written word. You might use objects which teams put together to solve problems. You might use arts and crafts materials such as coloured construction paper, tape, string, card, pens and the like. You might use people to create improvisational role plays.'

Read more at: http://www.jpb.com/creative/visual_brainstorming.php

Individual and Group Brainstorming

Any one who wishes to perform a Brainstorming session should ‘Welcome Creativity’. I perceive the term creativity as a classmate of the term brainstorming; and this is true, because one should be creative in thinking in order to develop new ideas and indulge in brainstorming sessions.
Brainstorming is a useful and popular tool that you can use to develop creative and effective solutions to a problem. It is particularly helpful when you need to break out of stale, established patterns of thinking, so that you can develop new ways of looking at things. This can be when you need to develop new opportunities, where you want to improve the service that you offer, or when existing approaches just aren't giving you the results you want.
Used with your team, it helps you bring the experience of all team members into play during problem solving.
This increases the richness of solutions explored (meaning that you can find better solutions to the problems you face, and make better decisions.) It can also help you get buy in from team members for the solution chosen - after all, they have helped create that solution.
Individual Brainstorming
When you brainstorm on your own you will tend to produce a wider range of ideas than with group brainstorming - you do not have to worry about other people's egos or opinions, and can therefore be more freely creative. You may not, however, develop ideas as effectively as you do not have the experience of a group to help you.
When Brainstorming on your own, it can be helpful to use Mind Maps to arrange and develop ideas.
Group Brainstorming
Group brainstorming can be very effective as it uses the experience and creativity of all members of the group. When individual members reach their limit on an idea, another member's creativity and experience can take the idea to the next stage. Therefore, group brainstorming tends to develop ideas in more depth than individual brainstorming.
Brainstorming in a group can be risky for individuals. Valuable but strange suggestions may appear stupid at first sight. Because of this, you need to chair sessions tightly so that uncreative people do not crush these ideas and leave group members feeling humiliated.

Read more at: http://www.mindtools.com/brainstm.html

Honda History


Honda Motorcycles - A Five Decade JourneyBy Staff WriterHonda has grown to become a top manufacturer of motorcycles. Its history can be considered a journey through five decades of forward thinking and technological innovations.Soichiro Honda's success parallels the classic rags-to-riches fable - the lone individual starting in a humble setting, battling odds and succeeding, through talent, ingenuity, and good fortune. In a nation noted for reserve, Mr. Honda was and is often direct, frequently exuberant, sometimes hilarious, and always confident. He preferred getting his hands greasy in the shop over shuffling papers in the office. He chose learning on the job over academic paper chases. Yet when he realized that there was a deficiency in his technical knowledge, he did not hesitate to enroll in a technical high school - at age 29. The year was 1935. The motivation: learn why he was having problems manufacturing piston rings.Before his venture into piston rings, Honda was employed as a technician. Automobiles, rather than motorcycles, were his first love. He dreamed of racing. After completing eight years of schooling, he joined an auto repair shop at age 15. Two years later, he became a Harley owner and then an Indian rider.He opened his own auto and motorcycle repair shop in 1928 while pursuing his hobby, building racing cars. That same year, he applied for his first patent, for casting automobile wheel spokes. He organized Tokai Seiki Company, Ltd. to experiment with manufacturing piston rings. After initial failures, he sought further education which enabled him to successfully produce piston rings for automobiles, motorcycles and airplanes.In 1945, Honda sold his stock to Toyota and took a year off. His sabbatical included music-making and merriment. Refreshed, he launched Honda Technical Research Laboratory in October of 1946. His new venture added war surplus Tohatsu and Mikuni generator motors to bicycles to provide basic transportation for the war-torn nation.In November 1947, the 1/2 horsepower A-Type Honda was being manufactured and sold as a complete motorbike. Because the motorbike gave off a lot of smoke and a stench of turpentine it was known as the "Chimney".Soichiro Honda started Honda Motor Company in 1948, at the age of 41. Soon after, he hooked up with financial whiz Takeo Fujisawa and together they built an empire. Honda enlisted 13,000 bicycle shops in Japan as Honda dealers. This move, combined with a decently reliable product, catapulted the company forward.In 1948, Honda introduced a 90cc version of the A-Type known as the "B-Type".By 1949, Honda came out with the "D-Type". Mr. Honda was involved in every step of the two-stroke D-Type Dream's design and manufacture. This was Honda's first motorcycle. This was far from simply slotting a motor into a pushbike frame. Honda called his machine 'The Dream', because his dream of building a complete, motorcycle had come true. Soichiro Honda was an engineer and was always looking to produce better and more sophisticated machines.Honda had another dream and it turned out to be the 146cc, OHV, four-stroke E-Type Dream. A powerful machine producing 5 1/2bhp capable of 50mph. It had a steel frame and proper suspension front and rear. By October 1951, the new Dream was in production at the rate of 130 units per day. Sales success allowed Honda to focus vigorously on two key ingredients: quality and design.In 1952, Honda produced the first "Cub" F-Type, a 1/2 horsepower, 50cc, two-stroke engine that was produced in huge numbers. You could get one to fit to your pushbike or buy the complete red and white Honda "Auto Bai". Less than a year after its introduction, production was 6500 units per month, at that time it was 70% of Japan's powered two-wheeler market.Sales continued to boom, but the end of Korean War in 1953 triggered an economic depression in Japan that almost ruined Honda. The company survived, bolstered by the sale of Cub clip-on motors that were attached to bicycles. Healthy again, Honda produced the 90cc, four-stroke single, a motorcycle of even greater sophistication. This was known as the Benly; in Japanese this means "convenience". The J-Type Benly had a three-speed gearbox, produced 3.8bhp, a pressed steel frame, rear suspension with the engine and swinging arm on a sprung pivot, and telescopic front suspension. Before long, they were selling at a rate of 1000 units a month.

keep on reading : http://motorhelmets.com/htm-service/resources-motorcycle-articles-honda-history.htm