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The story of how LEGO, the family-owned toy company went from teetering on the brink of disaster and haemorrhaging cash to delivering the highest revenues in its entire history and being voted the 2017 Most Powerful Brand in the World makes for a truly inspirational tale…   Fourteen years ago, LEGO’s Head of Strategic Development […]

Coffee is one of the most sought after commodities in the world but even that fact doesn’t make coffee traders immune to economic turbulence. Such was the case for family-run green bean coffee merchant D.R. Wakefield. During one particularly volatile period, the UK-based business was subject to some tough grilling by its bank but just […]

Rapid growth is the stuff most entrepreneurs dream about as they take their fledgling company through the early years but when it happens, it can quickly become the stuff of nightmares. The bubbles in the celebratory champagne—“Here’s to our success!”—barely have time to go flat before the problems arise across the high-impact growth or Scale […]

If You Want To Succeed, You Need To Embrace The ‘F’ Word What do Sir James Dyson, the Mercedes F1 team, Pixar, Google and the airline industry have in common? They’re hugely successful, yes. But the thing that links them is they never shy away from the ‘F’ word—Failure. Instead, they face and learn from […]

Business control is vital – at both ends of the business spectrum After the first flush of start-up, many business owners find themselves faced with common problems caused by business control. Those problems tend to polarise into coping with potential failure or run-away success – the ‘zero or hero’ scenario. The heroes are fast-growing, successful […]

The Olympic Games allows top athletes the chance to compete against the best in the world and gives TV audiences the opportunity to watch non-stop sports for three weeks, but it’s usually an economic disaster for the city that hosts the event. The fact that host cities are left with a few over-sized stadiums (so-called […]

People might have laughed when twin brothers Alan and Gerry Keery first said they needed to raise around $100,000 to open a café that would only offer breakfast cereals, but thanks to the widespread publicity they garnered from their appeal on the crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, they were able to raise the funds they needed. Although […]

Do you dream of selling your business for a very tidy profit so you can retire and spend your days on luxury cruises or working on your golf handicap? Well, without an exit plan, your dream may be just that; a dream that never comes to fruition. Sell at the wrong time or without thinking […]