Your capabilities in maintaining perspective (reality vs. euphoria), balancing today's and tomorrow's needs, and coordinating resources are being tested. The original route to success works for some time, but then it stops working so well and hits diminishing returns.

You are in the exciting part of the S-curve and now is time where your future market share will be determined. You need to be able to act quick and dump the (legacy) systems that hamper your ability to respond a hyper speed to new opportunities to expand your market share.

Things to consider when buying or selling a business. If you are considering buying (or selling) your business, please have a look at this presentation on buying a business.

Innovation does not happen; it must be planned for, organised and managed. Do you:

There are a few steps you can take to help you prepare for an acquisition. The suggested steps are:

Why do strategies fall apart:

You need to specify target industries and criteria for evaluating candidates for acquisition within these industries.

Strategy analysis. Use this to analyse your strategic ability.

There has been a lot of literature on the latest management fads (all principles apply, a SWOT analysis will always work) and about the speed of change, the need to be different and the unpredictability of the future. The only thing you can control in that context is being different.

Mergers and acquisitions often play a key role in a company's ongoing growth-planning process. It may be more efficient to achieve the objectives by buying assets and resources needed for growth.

Do you have a compelling value proposition?

Take stock of your business achievements, your resources and current market position, before you raise decide on your future direction. Do this (very) regularly.

Given the rapidly moving changes in our marketplace, the challenge for the entrepreneurial company is how and when to grow. And this leads to other major questions that can be difficult to answer.

Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics: scale (the change affects all or most of the organization), magnitude (it involves significant alterations of the status quo), duration (it lasts for months, if not years), and strategic importance.