Not All Growth Is Created Equal: Scaling Your Biz

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What happens when you have too much of a good thing, too quickly? While it is natural for a well-planned business to want to succeed and grow, careful attention must be paid to how the business plans to grow and at what pace.

Far too often, businesses that are flooded with new customers cannot deal with the demands that are created as a result. When a business starts to grow too quickly, its management will sometimes attempt to regain control in a number of ways that could be potentially damaging; for instance, they may launch ill planned new product lines or services, hire in excess, acquire expensive or unneeded facilities, and so on. As a result of these panicked business decisions, cash flow shortages can occur and eventually cause the company to hemorrhage funds, negating the value of the growth in the first place.

Presenters

Donna Boyer

Chief Prod Officer

Blurb Inc

Donna Boyer is Chief Product Officer at Blurb and a self-confessed product geek obsessed with building smart technology that enables new ways of creating and consuming content. Donna started out at the Harvard Business School where she researched the global economic impact of technology innovations. Since then she has focused on how to empower creative people to bring beauty and outstanding user experience into the digital world, working with companies like Starbucks and New York Times to create new digital content experiences.

Before Blurb, Donna was VP of Product at Callaway Digital Arts where she worked with publishers to produce award-winning illustrated books for the iPad. As Chief Product Officer at Blurb, she is leading the charge into the digital and mobile space, helping design-minded customers optimize their storytelling for tablets and smartphones.

Ingrid Vanderveldt

Entrepreneur in Residence

Dell

INGRID VANDERVELDT is an entrepreneur, investor and media personality, with a mission of “Empowering a Billion Women by 2020”(EBW2020) leveraging business, policy & media. She is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence (“EIR”) for Dell Inc. and the Creator/Curator of the $100M Dell Innovators Credit Fund (DICF) to power entrepreneurs worldwide. She is a member of The 2013-2014 UN Foundation Global Entrepreneurship Council.

Leader of the Dell Founders Club and the Dell Center for Entrepreneurs Vanderveldt oversees the program that provides access for Dell’s 10M small business customers. Her resources and expertise help entrepreneurs worldwide build and grow their companies. (www.dell.com/entrepreneur)

You can follow her at @ontheroadwithiv