Small Business Leadership

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

Breaking into freelance writing has gotten much easier for word-savvy entrepreneurs like you. But even in the golden age of content creation, you still need to know what it takes to launch and consistently pitch your services so you can grow and scale your freelance writing side hustle into a full-fledged career you really love. Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business is an easy-to-understand, introductory, and nontechnical approach to the world of freelance writing.

UTV founder and pioneer of the media industry Ronnie Screwvala is one of India’s most successful first-generation entrepreneurs. An avid philanthropist, he has penned Dream with Your Eyes Open: An Entrepreneurial Journey as one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial self-help books.

The pressure to generate big ideas can feel overwhelming. We know that bold innovations are critical in these disruptive and competitive times, but when it comes to breakthrough thinking, we often freeze up. Instead of shooting for a $10-billion payday or a Nobel Prize, the most prolific innovators focus on Big Little Breakthroughs - small creative acts that unlock massive rewards over time. By cultivating daily micro-innovations, individuals and organizations are better equipped to tackle tough challenges and seize transformational opportunities.

In The 10% Entrepreneur, Patrick McGinnis shows you how, by investing just 10% of your time and resources, you can become an entrepreneur without losing a steady paycheck. McGinnis details a step-by-step plan that takes you from identifying your first entrepreneurial project to figuring out the smartest way to commit resources to it. He shows you how to select and engage in projects that will provide you with upside outside the office while making you better at your day job.

It is time to stop the busy work of constantly putting out fires. It’s time to Let Your Business Burn. Scott Beebe has helped liberate business owners around the world from the chaos of constantly putting out hundreds of petty fires and has equipped them to let their business burn. In Let Your Business Burn, Scott guides you through a story-filled, template-packed, step-by-step discovery of the foundational elements that every business needs to stop putting out fires and instead build a business that matters.

In the realm of small businesses, a common obstacle is the lack of leadership. To bridge this gap, this book offers a comprehensive guide incorporating the wisdom amassed over years of practical business experience. Authored by an industry expert, the content is derived from a bi-weekly blog that was initially addressed to his leadership team, and now has been curated into a single, impactful volume for a wider audience.

Globally recognized digital expert David L. Rogers argues that digital transformation is not about updating your technology but about upgrading your strategic thinking. Based on Rogers' decade of research and teaching at Columbia Business School and his consulting for businesses around the world, The Digital Transformation Playbook shows how pre-digital-era companies can reinvigorate their game plans and capture the new opportunities of the digital world.

Unlock the power of Six Sigma with this essential guide to streamlining success! Have you ever struggled with inefficiencies in your business processes that lead to poor quality, wasted time, and decreased profits? Are you looking for a way to enhance your organization's performance and exceed customer expectations? If so, you're not alone, and you've come to the right place! Many businesses face these challenges every day. From inefficient processes to a lack of customer satisfaction, these issues can hinder a company's growth and success.

I wish I knew then what I know now. Famous last words. Seven years invested, saddled with a ton of debt, and loads of personal stress, with sadness, I closed my failing yoga studio at the end of 2015. But I found light at the end of the tunnel. I turned around a disastrous situation from all the lessons learned. Now I pass my knowledge on to you. Save thousands of dollars, jump ahead of your competition, and thoroughly understand the business of yoga before you begin.

If you’re an innovator or entrepreneur, you challenge precedent and disrupt the status quo. You trust that the result is worth the struggle and embrace change because it could equal progress. You have blind faith. You know that success isn’t reserved for the superstars, but you remain humble because failure is always a possibility This journey of entrepreneurship and innovation shouldn’t be a solo trip. If you’re missing something, struggling to begin, or have reached a plateau, fellow entrepreneur and innovator Bob Moesta knows your next steps because he’s been there himself.

Before you venture into the business world, however, you need to know what you are doing. That is where this guidebook comes in. Nothing is going to kill your business quicker than making too many mistakes. Some of these mistakes could very well be the difference between success and failure. Mistakes are one of the biggest concerns for many new entrepreneurs, especially since they have no idea what they are doing when they are fresh in the industry. Dropshipping for Beginners, The Ultimate Guide: E-Commerce 101 is going to help set you on the right path to success.

"The Ultimate Career Survival Master Course" is designed to transform you into an irreplaceable asset in your field. More than a mere guide, this book equips you with the strategies and mindset required to become the most valued individual in your career. Amid a shifting work landscape and rapidly advancing technology, equip yourself with the tools to not just survive but thrive. It's time to future-proof your career and shine in any circumstance.

Coach your small group leaders. Lead Small: Five Big Ideas Every Small Group Leader Needs to Know (narrated by Reggie Joiner) is full of both personal insight and practical advice. It clarifies the responsibilities of small group leaders of children and teenagers and delivers five proven strategies for leaders. Most small group leaders want to do something significant and are itching to make a difference. This is the audiobook for them. Because when we lead small, we make a big impact on the faith of the next generation.

In the early stages of a tech startup's life, it's hard to decipher the meaningful metrics from the distractions. How do you know if your product is working? Is it the number of new signups? Average amount of time spent on the site? Revenue, even if you don't have a revenue model yet? In Scaling Lean, serial entrepreneur and author of the startup cult classic Running Lean Ash Maurya offers a tactical handbook for measuring and scaling a tech startup with maximum efficiency and efficacy.

The best entrepreneurs balance brilliant business ideas with a rigorous commitment to serving their customers' needs. If you read (or listen) to nothing else on entrepreneurship and start-ups, listen to these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you build your company for enduring success.

1000 Tips and Tools for Small Business Success is a compact, informative guide for small business owners and managers. Written by an expert business consultant, this handy volume provides helpful advice for all areas of managing a business. If you need answers to your HR, marketing, and operation management needs, you will find them here.

In this new book, Frederick Chavalit Tsao and Chris Laszlo argue that current approaches to leadership fail to produce positive outcomes for either businesses or the communities they serve. Employee disengagement and customer fickleness remain high, resulting in a lack of creativity and collaboration at all levels of entrepreneurial activity. Investor demand for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) continues to be poorly integrated into profit strategies.

Through dozens of interviews with M&A leaders at the biggest Silicon Valley acquirers—as well as attorneys, bankers, and founders who have been through the trenches—Exit Right delivers the hard-earned lessons that lead to successful exits. From negotiation to valuation to breaking down a term sheet, managing legal costs, and handling emotional turbulence—this unparalleled guide covers every critical aspect of a technology startup sale.

Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders.