Innovation is the current corporate mantra, and there’s no doubt that when done right it can create wonders. But innovation is not required in every business especially when things are as good as they should be. This article describes three businesses whose owners have always tried to keep things as they have always been, and continue to reap profits from this strategy.

Source: Forbes

Online survey firm Zoomerang and GrowBiz Media has come out with a report after surveying 751 small firms which reveals that about 89% of these firms which have less than 25 employees will be allocating most of their marketing funds to traditional websites and email. Only 10% of the respondents planned to spend a minimum of 30% of their marketing budgets on social media. Furthermore it revealed that most small businesses get and maintain their customers through traditional in-person networking.

As a business strategy, freemium has worked for many businesses, but it has its detractors who have valid points to make against the freemium business model. For example, how can you sustain quality and manage your business efficiently if you have an overload of free customers? Box.net is a freemium success story, using its example as a springboard, the author suggest ways to making the freemium business model work for your business.

Source: Inc Magazine

Focusing on best practices maybe good and effective, but focusing on worst practices can be as effective if not more especially if you want to be disruptive. Looking for worst practices in your company and that of your rivals and then setting about improving them would help you gain a powerful edge.

This year-end is going to be tough on small businesses as economist have already predicted that the holiday season would likely not be all that great. This is a good time to scrutinize your business and discard what isn’t working and can be done away with. You may need to rethink your approach to achieving your business’ goals. Apart from that hold on to cash as much as possible, for example delay paying bills now that can be paid in January, you can also work up a plan to pay them in installments. Next start lining up work for 2011.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago and in this article talks about how he came to a decision about whether to charge less for his framing services in these financially unstable times or to advertise more. He describes the process in brief but insightful detail which would be very useful to any business.

Source: NY Times

Marketing theories have traditionally focused on the virtues of being customer-centric, that is placing a high degree of emphasis on identifying and fulfilling customer requirements and desires. However, the age of e-commerce has given birth to a new breed of companies that have replaced customer-centric strategy with the much cheaper and value-yielding customer compliance strategy. These companies use what has been termed as the ‘customer compliance business model’ or CCBM.

Companies harp on innovation, some like Apple, seem to thrive on it, but most people would agree that the process of innovation carries a certain amount of risk. In fact two innovation heavy products this year - Apple’s iPad and Toyota’s Prius consumed almost equal amount of newsprint for the opposite reasons. While the former received mostly favorable reviews at its launch, the latter had to bear the infamy of heavy product recalls.