When you ask these questions of first-line employees, you quickly discover that in most companies there’s still a big gap between the rhetoric of innovation and the reality:

• How have you been trained as a business innovator? What investment has the company made in teaching you how to innovate?
• If you have a new idea, how much bureaucracy do you have to go through to get

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Authors: Gary Hamel, Joanna Barsh, Lowell Bryan
Subject: Innovation Questions

• How would the key decision-makers be placed in communication with each other quickly so they could be informed and make a joint decision? What is their advance standard of how fast they would commit to making a decision? Would all of them be involved in the decisions related to financial commitments involved in decision-making? If not, who would be?
• Who inside and outside your organization

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Author: Kare Anderson
Source: Be the Face They Trust When the Crisis Hits
Subject: Business Continuity / Crisis Questions

Before getting started with a business-continuity plan, CIOs should ask some strategic questions:

• Have we created a financial-impact model for the per-hour cost of outage and the effect on revenue, profit, and legal actions? Assuming the hourly cost is millions of dollars, how would a prolonged outage affect profit?
• If a major disruption occurs, can we recover and in what time frame? What if it takes

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Author: Mark Dangelo
Source: Fending Off Disaster
Subject: Business Continuity / Crisis Questions

1. Can the client clearly articulate the objectives and anticipated benefits of the project? An ill-defined project often signals that the client is still wrestling with what needs to be done. In that case, you can offer to help the client frame the problem, but it’s premature to jump into the sales process. Until you nail down the objectives and anticipated benefits, expect the

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Author: Michael W. McLaughlin
Source: When to Walk Away from a Sale: Nine Pivotal Questions
Subject: Sales Questions

Ask potential application service providers the following questions, supplied by Greg Gianforte, CEO of ASP RightNow Technologies. There isn’t a single set of correct answers; the point is that a few simple yes and no questions won’t generally get you enough information to know whether the ASP offers an appropriate level of security for your particular application.

Physical Security

• Describe the physical security and disaster recovery

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Author: Greg Gianforte
Source: What to Ask an ASP
Subject: IT Questions

Okay, you have decided to raise venture money. You have had a few meetings with a VC, presented to some partners, and you are in the pre-termsheet pipeline with a venture firm that you’re interested in. Okay, but that is a much more perilous place than most entrepreneurs understand, so here are four questions you need to get answered right away:

1. Do I have

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Author: Paul Kedrosky
Source: Four Unusual Questions You Should Ask in Raising Venture Money
Subject: Entrepreneurship Questions

1. What is your competitive advantage? Simply being in an industry with successful competitors is not enough. You need to effectively communicate how your company is different and why you have an advantage over the competition. Do you have a better distribution channel? Key partners? Proprietary technology?
2. Who is behind the company? “Bet on the jockey, not the horse” is a familiar saying among investors.

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Author: Mike Drummond
Source: Under the Microscope: Funding in 2001
Subject: Entrepreneurship Questions

1. What will your role in the business be, and what do you expect mine to be? The co-CEO game can be difficult, so consider putting one person in charge.
2. How will we split up ownership, how will we divide profits and losses, and how will we each be paid? Some experts suggest avoiding a 50-50 ownership split. But if you are equal partners, be

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Author: Stephanie Clifford
Source: 10 Questions to Ask Your Partner (Before You Sign an Agreement)
Subject: Entrepreneurship Questions

Different people learn differently. In order to help you be successful as a business mentor, review the practical tips below so you can adapt your teaching styles and get the most from your people and their potential:

1. Do they like to gather information through words, and if so, what kind? Everyone responds to the spoken word, but some people are more “doers” than listeners

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Author: A. J. Schuler
Source: Becoming a Successful Mentor: How to Recognize the Different Ways Your People Learn
Subject: Management Questions

1. Are we fit to fight? Before even thinking about engaging in war, it is safe to wonder whether one is fit to fight. Companies faring worst in the boom-bust of the 1990s were those with high debt levels and/or over-capacity. So, the first question is: have we cleaned our house sufficiently structurally to be fit to fight—no more overweight soldiers, no more

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Authors: Herman Vantrappen, Hubertus M. Mühlhäuser, Nils Bohlin
Source: Smart Growth: A Road Map for Executives
Subject: Management Questions