Five Ways To Build Billion-Dollar Businesses
Forbes, Sep 2006 - by Hannah Clark
David G. Thomson thinks there is a secet formula to build billion dollar businesses. In his book, Blueprint to a Billion, Thomson identifies traits that fast-growing companies share. This book is based on hard evidence.
Thomson identified the 387 firms that have gone public since 1980 and grown to $1 billion in revenue. It's a select group; only 5% of the companies that have gone public in the last 26 years fit his criteria. But those firms have influence far beyond their numbers.
These companies, after hitting a certain point, grew at an exponential rate, reaching the billion mark in four to 12 years. How did they do it?
The following are the five traits that Thomson identifies:
1. Get a big idea - while it never is easy to get a big idea that also makes business sense in a practical way, the good news is, there are three different types of billion-dollar ideas. You have to start with one of them.
2. Find a marquee customer - your marquee customers don't have to be billion-dollar companies, but they need to be influencers.
3. Embrace Big Brother - When a small fry teams up with a big guy, both companies benefit.
4. Master the inside/outside dynamic - Great companies are built by great teams, and preferably one key team member should focus on the outside (marketing, sales...), while another focused on the inside - operations and innovation...
5. Put billion-dollar experts on your board - Companies that succeeded put customers and alliance partners on their boards. They also looked to CEOs who had built billion-dollar companies before.
Read the full story from Forbes
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