It’s probable that you’ve been delaying the inevitable. That dreaded day when you’d have to sit down and come to grips with what all the buzz about cloud computing actually means for your company. I’ve got good news. Mostly, it means profits.

As a business owner, you’ve invested a lot in the technology driving your business. From the computers you use to run your back office to the automated manufacturing machines making your products, you rely on technology every day. What happens when the technology fails? Have you thought about what happens when the unthinkable happens? Do you have plans to recover from a fire? From a natural disaster, such as a tornado, hurricane, or earthquake? From your machines breaking down from wear and tear? What will you do when it happens to you?

Making Your Plan

As a responsible business owner, you think about the what-ifs, and you make a backup plan.

Problem: we are sometimes too clever for our own good.

With the technology we have available today, simply better employed, we could put approximately half the world’s working population out of work. That is to say that the total goods and services demanded by the current global population could be produced by roughly half as many people as are currently employed.

Do you ever think about where your food comes from? When you shop in the grocery store, or buy a meal out: either at a fast-food restaurant or a sit-down establishment: do you think about the industry behind what you’re eating? If you don’t, you’re not alone.

Most Americans have seen Scott Adams’ comic strip Dilbert. Dilbert is the quintessential techno-geek. If a new technology comes out, he’s going to be first in line to get it. New technology relies on the Dilberts of this world; if a product is going to be successful, it has to get out into the hands of its target audience.

Today’s busy consumers have many technological options available today, and the range of things the average smartphone can do definitely has an impact on the evolving relationship between your customers and your company. Does your customers’ growing reliance upon smartphones have implications for the success of your business? Understanding the complex ballet of the consumer and the smartphone in the marketplace is critical to your customer service and marketing strategies going forward.

Game theory is probably one of the most powerful training tools in existence. Actually, it’s probably one of the most powerful business tools period, but that’s well beyond the scope of this small article. For the moment, let’s focus on training, and I’ll show you how you can use game theory to take your training program to a whole new level, and make it more effective than you ever imagined possible.

You need many people and organizations to create and maintain any business, from the janitor who cleans your building to the celebrity who endorses your brands. This concept translates to relationships with other businesses. There are other businesses in your area that may be able to help support you while you support them.

You need many people and organizations to create and maintain any business, from the janitor who cleans your building to the celebrity who endorses your brands. This concept translates to relationships with other businesses. There are other businesses in your area that may be able to help support you while you support them.

What exactly is meant by the term “open data”? More specifically, what does it mean for your small business?

Open data is the concept of certain data being freely available to anyone who wants to use it, without concern for patents, copyrights, or other methods of control.