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01Nov 24

Is Your Company Truly a Start-up? Six Defining Characteristics

The term "start-up" gets thrown around a lot, but not every new business qualifies. Start-ups differ significantly from traditional small businesses in their objectives, strategies, and operations. So, how can you tell if your company truly fits the mould? Here are six key criteria we have developed over our 20+…

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14Oct 24

How Writing a Business Plan Can Become a Hurdle

Starting a business is an exhilarating journey filled with dreams of innovation and success. Yet, the task of writing a business plan, while essential, can sometimes become a significant hurdle. Here’s how this critical step can impede progress and what entrepreneurs can do to navigate this challenge effectively. The Overwhelming…

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12Sep 24
Startups4peace

Fuelling Peace Through Innovation: We’re Proud Partners of Startups4Peace!

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with the inspiring Startups4Peace (Su4P) programme! This exciting competition and acceleration programme is a powerful collaboration for peace, co-funded by the Embassy of Finland and the European Union as part of the eunite:SME project, and implemented by GIZ International Services. We're joining forces…

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28Jul 24

Embracing the Digital Age: The Significance of Digitization in Business

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the digital revolution has ushered in unprecedented opportunities and challenges. From streamlining operations to enhancing customer experiences, digitization has become a cornerstone of success for businesses across industries. In this article, we'll explore the importance of digitization in modern business and how it drives…

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11Jun 24

A Comprehensive Guide to Market Assessment for Business Success

In the dynamic world of business, understanding your marketplace is paramount for making informed decisions, seizing opportunities, and maintaining a competitive edge. Whether you're embarking on a new venture, expanding into new markets, or refining your existing strategy, a thorough assessment of your marketplace provides invaluable insights into customer needs,…

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30May 24

Do small and medium firms utilise strategy planning tool products ?

Small to medium-sized firms often purchase strategy planning tools and products to help them effectively develop, implement, and manage their strategic initiatives. While larger enterprises may have dedicated strategy departments or resources, smaller firms can benefit equally from using these tools to; 1. Facilitate Planning Process. Strategy planning tools provide…

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12May 24

The Power of Planning: Why Business Planning is Essential for Small Businesses

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, small businesses often find themselves juggling multiple priorities, from managing day-to-day operations to chasing new opportunities for growth. In the midst of this hustle and bustle, the importance of strategic business planning can sometimes be overlooked. However, the truth is that having a well-thought-out…

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30Apr 24

Why Understanding Customers is Essential in a Startup Environment

In the world of startups, success is often measured by innovation, disruption, and rapid growth. However, amidst the excitement of bringing a new idea to market, one fundamental principle often takes centre stage: understanding your customers. In the startup environment, where resources are limited and risks are high, the importance…

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17Apr 24
Conquering Growth Challenges With XPinnovates:

What is GrowthSprint?

Growthsprint is a focused planning period of time during which a team or organisation dedicates intensive effort towards achieving specific growth-related goals or objectives. This concept is often used in the context of agile methodologies, where sprints are short, time-boxed iterations of work aimed at delivering valuable outcomes. In the…

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10Oct 23
Startup Sales

Business Planning Needs an Agile Approach

Planning has held a foundational role in management for years. Back in the early twentieth century conventional thinking  outlined the key functions of managers as planning, organising, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. Throughout the century, the capacity and willingness of managers to plan evolved significantly. Large corporations established specialised units for…

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01Aug 23
Ecommerce

Unveiling The Secret To A Thriving Ecommerce Business

Introduction Ecommerce has become an integral part of modern life, with countless online stores offering a wide range of products and services. Over the past few years, this rapidly growing industry has witnessed significant advancements and new trends shaping its future. As a result, businesses must continuously adapt and evolve…

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25Jul 23
Xpinnovates Export Planning

Breaking Borders: Strategies for International Business Growth

In today's global economy, businesses must be prepared to scale beyond their own borders in order to maintain a competitive edge. Breaking into international markets can open up a world of new customers, opportunities, and revenue streams, but there are many challenges to navigate. We explore the secrets to successfully…

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22Jul 23
AI

The Rise of AI: How Business Will Never Be the Same

Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, refers to the development and implementation of computer systems and software that can perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as problem-solving, learning, reasoning, perception, comprehension, and decision-making, among others. AI systems can adapt and evolve their behaviour over time, often through machine learning…

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01Jun 23
Cyrpus

Angel Investment Northern Cyprus

A big thank you to our hosts last week in Cyprus - NI-CO and  AB İnovatif Girişimcilik / EU Innovative Entrepreneurship, who we are assisting in developing the entrepreneurship ecosystem and improving the innovation culture in the Turkish Cypriot community. We explored the opportunities for a private angel investment network…

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11Apr 23
Xpinnovates

The Power of Planning: Why a Solid Business Plan is Key to Success

Organisations need a business plan for several reasons: Clarify goals and objectives: Planning helps businesses clarify their goals and objectives. By defining what they want to achieve, businesses can focus their resources and efforts towards achieving those goals. Identify potential challenges: Planning helps businesses identify potential challenges and risks that…

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01Mar 23

6 Strategies to overcome risks in business growth

Six approaches to deal with risks in business growth For business owners who are feeling tired of inconsistent growth… You're not alone. Every entrepreneur faces challenges on their path to success, and while you can do very little about the external drivers of business growth, there are plenty of levers…

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29Jun 22
GrowthSprint

Deliverable Impact in 90 Days – GrowthSprint

We need to get from A to B.  How do we do it?  Our consultancy framework GrowthSprint™ is a unique framework to help you deliver measurable impacts on your business in just 90 days.  We work with you over a 3 phase program to explore and execute your growth possibilities. …

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08Mar 22

Start-up Sales: Understanding Your Buyer’s Mode

When selling complex solutions to organisations it is imperative to understand your buyer's mode. Not all potential buyers are in the same ‘mode’. All buyers are not in the same position or share the same outlook.  As a sales professional, you are likely to be trained to positive and sell…

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04Mar 22

Driving Change: How Empowering Individuals Can Shape Our Future

While much is written about frameworks, finance, and technology when talking about growth strategies and start-ups, so much is down to the people involved. Business leaders make the difference happen, people drive change. Skills and Attitudes Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind creating and growing new businesses. All too often,…

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17Jan 22

InterTradeIreland – Elevate Programme

Specifically aimed at Micro-Enterprises, we are authorised service provider for Elevate offering specific expertise to help you to identify and capitalise on the significant cross-border sales opportunities that exist on your doorstep. Up to £5,000/€5,750 (Including VAT) worth of consultancy time is available to you. You choose the Advisor that…

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04Jan 22

Maximizing Growth: 4 Proven Strategies for Business Success

A growth strategy is a plan to increase a business’s size and value. It defines how you will win a race against your competition and identifies the most efficient way of reaching your strategic objectives. What’s more, it will apply to many areas in your business, from sales to finance,…

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18Aug 21
Ecommerce

Boost Your Online Business: Strategies for Accelerated Growth

Since 2007 we have built up a mass of experience, stories and friendships. The  companies we have mentored and developed have gone on to export goods and services across the globe, from digital tools to life sciences, to fintech to agritech. Most of the businesses were started from a simple…

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19Jul 21
Startup Sales

Start-up Sales: Understanding Different Buyer Roles

There are broadly five ‘roles’ people play in the buying process. In start-up sales, you need to understand the different buyer roles. The roles defined here are not necessarily part of their job title, rather it’s the role they play in the potential purchase of your solution. It is imperative…

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04May 21
Startup Sales

Start-up Sales: Set A Single Sales Objective

Your purpose as a start-up sales executive, client acquisition manager, or even as the CEO is to acquire new clients. Your role is to sell your services to organisations in your target market. In start-up sales, you need to set single sales objectives. Too often we engage with a prospect,…

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29Apr 21
The Startup Way Eric Ries

When to apply Design Thinking and/or Lean Startup

Design Thinking and Lean Startup are part of the innovation portfolio. These methodologies are being used by corporates as well as startups to structure and de-risk their innovation activities. Inspired by success stories such as Uber and Airbnb companies are increasingly looking to Design Thinking and Lean Startup for answers. To…

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05Dec 20
Challenges Of Business Growth

Navigating Growth: The Scaleup Challenge for Startups

Starting a business is easy, but getting a venture to a state where it can trade successfully, on a profitable sustainable basis is difficult. Even after taking in rounds of investment, haveing a venture you can IPO or sell, the toughest task for anyone.  For the leadership team to take…

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24Nov 20

5 Ways Selling Makes The Difference To Scaling Up

We’ve long understood the concept of ‘crossing the chasm’. The task of established start-ups who have found the repeatable business model, but can’t get to that next step – the step of scaling up. Great products, cool brand, nice looking website. You’ve even got customers, an office, some staff, a…

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10Jul 20

Startups are not maximising R&D tax credits

Business innovation in startups and small businesses is often high risk and cost intensive.   In many countries, governments put in policies to support technology innovation.  If you are actively carrying out business innovation projects you need to invest some time to find out if your business can avail of R&D…

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28Jun 20

5 Reasons Why A Great Story is Needed to Sell Innovation

Engaging an audience and looking for support for your business idea is easy, but gaining funding or a green light to take your idea forward is the challenge in which so many fail to achieve. Good slides, nice numbers, and great delivery is never enough. What you have to do…

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10Jun 20
Value Proposition

Connecting Start-ups With Corporate Innovation

Over the past few years, there has been a shift in the way mainstream companies regard innovation. Innovation within regular companies is endless meetings, financial approval, and various different stakeholders. All, of course, slow down innovation. When these companies look at startups, they see small teams creating a mass of…

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27Nov 19
Crowdfunding

Examining the Risks and Rewards: A Comprehensive Look at Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has taken the start-up ecosystem by storm. Companies like Kickstarter, Seedrs and Crowdcube have become a funding choice for entrepreneurs. What may have seemed slightly risky or too unconventional for a mainstream business, have now become established and a clear alternative route to get funding into your business. If…

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22Nov 19
Hban

HBAN Hits £100m. Where do we start?

As true startup people ourselves, we look back with pride and gratitude at our role in working with InterTradeIreland in establishing the HBAN investment network in Ireland. Back in 2010 our programme team led by Diane Roberts started with a blank sheet, and with the support of the funders set…

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21May 19

The one day startup accelerator. What did we learn? #XP1

We took a chance and followed our own advice and tested our market with a lean approach. Was the market ready for something different? Could we sell enough tickets to make the idea viable? Is it possible to run a one day accelerator? Yes, yes and yes. Welcome to XP1.…

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26Apr 19

10 Innovation Initiatives To Kickstart Your Business

We’ve put together 10 innovation initiatives to take look at. 1. External Startup Accelerator. An external startup accelerator is a company initiative to support, grow and evaluate external startups over a defined period of time (say 3-12 months). The aim here is to garner ideas and technologies that may fit…

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06Apr 19
Business Planning

Sales Management – Funnel versus Pipeline

Sales management of your opportunities requires different attention and investment by you, dependent on where you deem them to be in the sales funnel. The incorrect sales approach - at the wrong time - will damage your chances of moving your prospect down the funnel to from initially being a…

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07Mar 19

CoffeeClub

We had the honour of hosting our first networking event this week. We coined it the 'CoffeeClub', not because we have any real passion for coffee, but its usually a reason we use to meet up with contacts and share stories and see how we can help each other. Peer…

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16Jun 18

The A-Z Modern Jargon for Business Innovation

Business innovation managers and startup entrepreneurs beware, the following 26 pieces of jargon are here with us to stay. Enjoy. My first experience of business jargon was back in the early 1990s, where I was asked to run an idea up the flagpole, to see who would salute it’. After…

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