Speed could be the single biggest competitive advantage that a company has. If you don't believe me, see below for the benefits of speed in running a successful organization:

• You develop ideas before your competition, giving yourself first-mover advantage
• You are responsive to customer issues and resolve them quickly
• You have a culture focused on speed so decisions can be made (and reversed) easily
• You can take advantage of sudden shifts in the marketplace and in the needs of your customers
• You get products and services out to market quickly
• You rapidly move forward with new strategies and organizational changes
• You maintain flexibility and responsiveness in everything you do
• You empower your employees to address opportunities and challenges quickly

Is there any other single element of your business that can create that many opportunities for success? Take advantage of being fast and responsive and don't hit your head on the way up!

The fastest way to grow revenue is through your existing customer base. This requires some introspection and a few strategic conversations, but it is the fastest and most cost-effective way to increase revenue. Here are the three things you need to do:

• Know your competitive advantage - Talk to customers, business partners, advisers and colleagues to determine what you do better than anyone else. Why would a customer choose you?
• Know your target market - Determine who can most benefit from the products and/or services you offer and what their needs are. Who would most benefit from what you offer?
• Communicate effectively - Once you have determined what you do better than anyone else and who will most benefit from that, you need to find an effective means to communicate that message to potential customers. What is the most effective way to communicate your strengths to those who would benefit from them the most?

A client of mine followed this strategy when expanding into new markets and they were very successful. They held numerous meetings to review the marketplace and identified the areas where they felt they were stronger or offered better value than the competition. They then created a profile of their target customer, including what that person's lifestyle might be like and what associations and organizations they might be a part of. From this they developed a strategy on how best to reach and communicate to that customer. The result was a huge increase in revenue as well as a reduction in the time spent generating that revenue. This increased productivity allowed them to meet with more potential customers and achieve a higher conversion rate for new customers, creating an additional surge of revenue.

Many recent articles have identified issues that Research in Motion may have in growing its' user base in countries like India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Why might growth be limited in these (and presumably some other) countries? Because RIM's network is too secure. The governments of these countries want RIM to relax some of their network security so that they can read private emails. One of the most appealing features of RIM products (at least for North American and European clients) IS the secure network for governments and corporations. Unfortunately, we are spending too much time talking about whether or not RIM will relax some of its network security for these countries. What we should be asking is 'why do they want to read the private emails of their citizens and employees?' To me, that is the much bigger question that warrants discussion. These countries are overtly saying that they want access to private emails and some might consider that an infringement of human rights. So far, RIM has steadfastly denied making any changes for these countries and I hope they hold that line, because if they relax security for these countries, it goes against their core strength and competitive advantage. It will be interesting to see if anyone else brings up the right to privacy issue that is screaming for attention.

It looks like RIM may have come up with a solution for Saudi Arabia and they have curbed some of the threats that have been floating around, will the same solution work for some of the other countries? Be careful what you wish for vis-a-vis global expansion. Some customers may be more effort than they are worth.