“How Do Small and Mid Sized Firms Grow” ….. by capitalizing on what’s happening in their market.
The old axiom of knowledge is power has never been more true in a dynamic market. In fact the rate of change has never been higher then it is today and one must know the market forces that are at work to properly position themselves fro not only growth but sometime their very own survival. So how does one stay on top of things in their market? They are involved. They read, attend meeting, speak to other inside and outside their company as well as their comfort zone. They accept the fact that they do not know everything and should not exit is their own private bubble with people that reinforce their own thinking. They need to recognize that just that because they may be doing well today they may not always continue to do well.
If you are like most companies, they operate in market that is changing as their competitors are trying to gain market share through innovation or any other means. The so called new normal economy is rather different then the old one, with generally lower growth, but notable exceptions such as oil and gas, staffing, healthcare/biotech, information technology and pockets of high growth usually geographically centered around those cities with a healthy dose of these industries, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin Texas, the Research Triangle in North Carolina, the oil/gas patch in several states, etc. In fact, high tech employment centers have grown 25 times faster in the country as a whole. And it’s not just the techie jobs that benefit from this growth, but it’s all the secondary and tertiary jobs and industries what feed off of them. For example, every new tech job creates 5 non tech jobs, from cab driver, manicurists and busboy to attorneys, physiologists and teachers. On top of this the wages for these other jobs go up as well, as supply and demand become out of balance due to the additional disposable income and service need from the expanding nucleus of the well paid job creators.
And the much maligned new normal economy has added stability to the market. In the past every 8-10 years we went from boom to bust, again and again. Sooner or later growth reached 5% or more for a year or two going back to the 1950’s and wages growth and shortages of goods and services lead to a business cycle bust and down we went, until things cooled down enough to start a recovery. We are now in 2 to 2
