[originally published 26th November 2015]
Following the structure of Inbound Marketing’ subject I am still coursing E-commerce through Google Actívate. So the content for today is about sharing some concepts and ideas that I hope you find interesting:
Benchmarking: is the process of comparing one’s business processes and performance metrics to industry bests or best practices from other companies. This information can then be used to identify gaps in an organization’s processes in order to achieve a competitive advantage.
You can read about the purpose and use of benchmarking here and how to do better benchmarking here.
LEAN Manufacturing is a philosophy of production developed in the 80s by Japanese car manufacturers. This system considers as waste the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer, and continually seeks ways to eliminate such waste. (You can get more information going through Lean Global Network. -The origin of “lean” meaning is attributed of JP Womack and Daniel Jones’ team. Now members of this global network.- )
Lean Startup philosophy follow the precepts of lean management. It is a method for developing businesses and products first proposed in 2011 by Eric Rie. You can get more information going through The Lean Startup web page.
Big data
Unicorn Startup: companies that have soared to a $1 billion valuation or higher, based on fundraising. Here you can see the unicorn list.
Inside of the current Unicorn Startups I find really interesting the story of Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos.
Theranos was founded in 2003. The main product used is a platform for blood tests which uses a few drops of blood obtained through a small puncture, rather than the traditional technique of using a syringe or a needle.
When she was a child she read the biography of his great great grandfather Christian R. Holmes, who was a surgeon, engineer, inventor and a decorated veteran of World War II: He was born in Denmark in 1857 and was the dean of the Faculty of Medicine University of Cincinnati, where a hospital is named in his honor. The career of his ancestor inspired Elizabeth to follow the profession of medicine, but quickly realized she was afraid of needles. Later Elizabeth commented that this fear is one of the motivations to create Theranos.
Holmes founded Theranos at age 19, after her uncle died of cancer, to make cheaper diagnostic tests that require only a few drops of blood from a finger prick. Investors valued her company at $9 billion in 2014–on a par with Quest Diagnostics, and her 50% stake at $4.5 billion. While it has not raised money since then, some pundits predict it has lost up to one third of its value.
Today Elizabeth is the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire. You can read more about it watching the video of this article and reading The New Yorker.