There is a lot that depends on chance. However, a lot (maybe more) depends on initiative.

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It is said to be better to find a product for a consumer than find a consumer for a product.

It’s worse to have a target market and then lose it.

The yoga-wear retailer is starting to lose their core consumer base after Lululemon chairman and co-founder Chip Wilson made some disparaging remarks about women’s bodies being the issue and not the pants. This is another stumble after their overly-sheer pants drew complaints.

Full article on Huff Po Business

In business school they had me read The Innovator’s Solut!on by Clayton Christensen. It wasn’t as profound of a read as my corporate entrepreneurship professor believed it to be; for example, Clayton stated that BlackBerry phone didn’t have a camera because it didn’t aid in the core function the end-user needed (i.e. business). Boy was Clayton wrong….especially now.

However, Clayton’s overall thesis of upstarts disrupting established companies to eventually become the dominant player in an industry is true.

At one point non-telecom companies that are now synonymous with telephones (e.g. Apple, Samsung) were merely new entrants into the hyper-competitive cell phone industry.

This kind of changing of the guards happens all the time in all industries. The latest well-known casualty, Blockbuster, is now closing. One thing Clayton did correctly observe is that disruptive technologies often debase established business models. We will see how Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. all fare in this brave new world.

Is Asia heading for a 1990s-style financial crisis?

Credit growth since 2008 has been rapid, leading to a run-up in house prices, high growth rates and corporate mega-deals.
But as the tide of cheap money from overseas rolls back from emerging economies across the region, analysts warn that Asia could be at the start of a series of currency and credit crises.