What can small business owners learn from old technology and its innovators? We will investigate Velcro and Q-Tips. The idea for Velcro originated with Georges de Mestral. In 1941, he wondered if burrs that clung to him and his dog could have a useful purpose. Eight years later, that thought was developed into Velcro, a combination of the words “velvet” ...

  Greg Conder Scheduled to Speak at Oklahoma Engineering Conference Greg Conder, Owner of Conder Business Solutions, LLC will be speaking at the Oklahoma Engineering Conference on June 9th, 2016 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mr. Conder will discuss two topics:   ART MEETS SCIENCE: A SYSTEM FOR INNOVATION Details to be discussed include mission alignment, methods for idea generation and feasibility. ...

There is a great deal of information on traits or qualities of a great leader and leadership. A few minutes of internet research revealed a list of about 30 characteristics. If you read a couple of books on leadership, you could add even more. One of the many ways that we assist, coach and advise small businesses is to take ...

  Greg Conder, Owner of Conder Business Solutions, LLC will be presenting a workshop discussing Innovation on May 4, 2016 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mr. Conder will be partnering with the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance for the delivery of the workshop. The workshop is designed for small and medium sized manufacturing businesses that are based in Oklahoma.   Click here for further ...

Strategies and goals can give you and your business a pathway to success.  Yogi Berra said “if you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else”.  Market, industry and other conditions can change quickly, so it is difficult to develop a strategy that is 100% guaranteed to succeed.  A strategic plan is more of a theory, hypothesis ...

  For many small business owner-operators of s-corps, understanding the differences between officer payroll and owner/shareholder distributions can be challenging. We have coached and consulted with many small business owners where this issue has arisen. One way the issue shows itself is in a statement from the owner like “my P&L statement indicates great profits, but I have no money ...

“Time is money” is a familiar phrase.  Time is like money in that it is valuable and it should be budgeted, tracked and used efficiently.  Time is not like money because it can’t be saved or borrowed.  Also, everyone has the exact same amount of 24 hours per day.  You can’t save 12 hours today and have 36 hours to ...

Innovate – to introduce something new; to make changes in anything established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas and products. Businesses and organizations need to innovate in order to grow, remain competitive, survive and thrive. Often, innovation is only associated with wonderful technological advances with large companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and GE to name a few. These companies ...

I recently participated in a Junior Achievement (JA) event. JA is an organization that teaches kids skills in work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. This specific event is called the JA Investor Challenge. The JA Investor Challenge is designed for high school kids to learn about the stock market through an exciting “hands-on” simulation. This gives the kids a chance ...

One of the many sayings of Dr. Russell Ackoff, an organizational management expert, is “a system is not the sum of its parts, it’s about their interactions”. Business is a system. Business can generally be divided into 3 main sections: marketing & sales, operations and financials. Of course these sections have overlap and can affect each other. The main goal ...