Continuous Bootstrapping as Strategy

Bootstrapping has long been associated with startups. Having few resources of their own, startups are forced to find ways to leverage the complementary resources of others in order to achieve their objectives. However, the pervasiveness of information technologies is forcing all of us – big and small – to adopt continuous bootstrapping as a fundamental strategy.

As the information content of products and services increases, the clockspeed of business accelerates. The facts are clear: the majority of business value is attributable to information-based (intangible) assets, and the average industry clockspeed (the average interval between new product introductions) is accelerating by over 9% per year. As I showed in my previous post, that kind of acceleration can easily require a doubling of the flow of a company’s successful new product introductions just to maintain current revenues over the medium-term.

Throwing money and resources at the challenge isn’t much of a solution: increasing your investment to maintain current returns kills your return on investment and will drive away investors and other resource providers. Rather, the ability to stay in the game requires accelerating improvements in your innovation productivity, your capability to apply resources effectively.

W. David Bayless

Full Story: http://radio.weblogs.com/0111718/2005/09/01.html#a288

Further Dispatches (Excellent Newsletter): http://www.pioneerentrepreneurs.net/No.28-dec05.php