Business
What is the small business capability gap?
The small business capability gap is the distance between what your business now demands of you and the capability you have had time to build. It opens quietly, as the business grows faster than the owner, and it is the real reason so many capable owners feel stretched, stuck, or busier without getting better. It closes by building capability on purpose, not by working harder or buying another tool.
What are the stages of business growth?
Most small businesses move through five stages of growth: Existence, Survival, Success, Take-Off and Resource Maturity. Each stage asks something different of the owner, and the trouble usually comes at the transitions, when the capability that got you here is not the capability the next stage needs. Knowing your stage tells you what to build next.
Why has my business stopped growing?
Usually because the way of working that built the business has reached its ceiling. The plateau is a stage signal, common after early success. Operational competence gets a business to steady ground, and growing beyond it asks for a different capability, so growth returns when the owner builds the next layer instead of pushing harder on the last one.
Why does innovation matter for a small business?
Because the conditions your business runs in keep changing, and innovation is simply the capability to keep pace. It is not about being flashy or first. It is the steady ability to improve how you work and what you offer, so the business stays fit as the world moves.
Who created the five stages of small business growth?
The five stages, Existence, Survival, Success, Take-off and Resource Maturity, come from Neil Churchill and Virginia Lewis, in a 1983 Harvard Business Review article. Their insight, still true today, was that what changes across the stages is not the size of the business but what it asks of the owner. Here is the model, and what we would add to it.
Why don't customers see the value in what I offer?
Usually because the value is clear to you but has not been made clear to them. Owners tend to describe what they do, when customers buy the outcome it gives them. Getting your value proposition sharp, before you build more, is what makes the offer make sense to them.
Why does my business get busier without getting better?
Because activity and progress are not the same thing. When the parts of the business do not work together as a system, more effort produces more motion without more result. The fix is not to do more, it is to make the parts connect, so the work compounds instead of just accumulating.
Being a B Corp saved our business
Having a purpose and being driven to make impact helped 25eight forge through a tumultuous time for many SMEs. How B Corp thinking guided the decisions that mattered.
Why innovation is vital for SMEs
Innovation gets bandied about a lot, especially by corporates and the media. What it actually means for a small to medium-sized business, and why it matters.