Five Tips for a Recession

Bart Perkins, the Chair of Roulston Research's technology expert community, recently attended a venture capital lunch forum where an editor from WIRED magazine gave a presentation entitled "Five Tips for a Recession". They were:

1. Don't wait for innovation
2. Boost R&D and grab talent
3. Start a company, the technology tools you need are cheap
4. Make innovation central to your business
5. Think like a VC

He used Apple and Dell as examples for #2. During the last recession, Apple grabbed talent and continued to pursue an aggressive R&D program. Dell cut these expenses in response to the economic conditions. For #3, his examples were cloud computing and open source software. Both models have drastically reduced the need to purchase, run and maintain your software. And for #5, his point was that while big companies will kill projects with a 70% chance of failure, VCs will gladly accept a project that has a 30% chance of success.