century

"If a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience will gain some money and the man with money will gain some experience."

I address this article to businesses, associations, non-profits and public entity managements seeking a direct connection between the money they're planning to spend on public relations, and the achievement of their organizational objectives.

In the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, you could plan a career and hope for security. People were advised, "If you choose Profession X, or learn Skill Y, you'll always have a job."

When it comes to modern career development, one thing we can all count on is change. With the advent of technology, telecommuting, and E-commerce, how work is performed is in a state of reinvention.

The product life cycle has been part of marketing strategy since the late 50's. All of us are either intuitively or intellectually aware of its five stages of introduction, growth, maturity, saturation and decline. Yet, this classic model now faces the same inevitability it predicted for brands and market segments. We all face a new reality wherein everyone knows the model, emulates it, then with alarming regularity...fails. Failure comes from the predictability of the strategies that we all believed were dictated by the model. Over the past five years we've seen mature core brands suffocate under their own weight like lost, beached whales on the shores of EDLP (every day low price) Beach.

Few business leaders today would debate the importance of partnering for practical and strategic advantage. Yet understanding the value of partnerships is a far cry from successfully developing and sustaining these crucial alliances. In "Partnering Intelligence: Creating Value for Your Business by Building Strong Alliances" organizational consultant Stephen M. Dent shows how to develop the power of partnerships in any organization and take the lead in 21st century business.