Tim Hamilton, an EO member in Austin, is founder and CEO of Praxent, a custom software and web app development firm that has been named for three consecutive years to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US, most recently as #2,118 on the 2019 list. In part 1 of this article, Tim discussed the false assumptions driving B2B innovations that fail. In this post, Tim offers B2B companies a strategy for creating digital products around customer experience gaps in their industries:B2B companies today have a strong desire to create better digital solutions for their buyers, recognizing innovative customer experience (CX) as a key ingredient to success in current markets. While the desire and intention to create disruptive digital customer experiences grows, however, the majority of B2B companies struggle to deliver.According to Accenture, 80 percent of B2B companies try to innovate around CX, but fail to generate a satisfactory return on investment. In all, billions of dollars are wasted on research and development of innovative ideas that never win new business.What does it take to design innovative digital customer experiences that predictably win? The key is uncovering the false assumptions driving the failure of B2B innovation experiments. Find the truth behind what motivates customers to make purchases in a given industry, then innovate around those foundational realities. 21025

By Shawn Johal, an entrepreneur, business growth coach and member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) in Montreal, Canada. What is mentorship, really?The mentor-mentee connection is a unique one—one that I never really understood before. The company I had co-founded in 2009, DALS Lighting, was thriving and we would soon have over 40 members on the team. I felt lucky that employees mentioned they “looked up” to me, but was I mentoring them? I had never been mentored by anybody in my life, and I didn’t know what it looked like. 21012

The statistics on small business survival are daunting: Only 50 percent of new companies will survive for more than five years in the U.S. marketplace. Before diving into entrepreneurship, wouldn’t it be ideal to tap into the knowledge of experienced, thriving business owners for advice on failure-proofing a new business?We asked members of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), a global, peer-to-peer network of 14,000-plus influential business owners, what lessons they wish they’d known to ensure ongoing success before starting their companies. 21009

Contributed by Angela Fernandez, vice president of community engagement, GS1 US. GS1 US, an information standards organization that helps brands identify their products for commerce, recently surveyed more than 500 entrepreneurs to identify best practices to achieve sustained success. The results are presented in “Charting the Growth Journey: From Product to Profitable Business.”Respondents were classified as “leaders,” those who achieved sales growth of more than 25 percent in the last year, or “laggards,” those whose sales declined in the past year.Explore the results to determine if your brand will lead the pack or stay in a holding pattern. 21000