Business Blueprint

4. Leverage Big Brother Alliances for Breaking into New Markets.
The complement to marquee customers is a big brother-little brother alliance relationship. These alliances, in which a bigger company helps a smaller one, provides credibility to the little brother, gives it market intelligence, and leads it to marquee customers. Microsoft's early alliance with IBM is a perfect example.

5. Become the Masters of Exponential Returns.
A fairly common management behavior suggests that allocating more resources toward developing and introducing products will solve innovation problems. This often leads to an over-investment situation. The technology industries serve to illustrate what it takes to create the highest value per company. They were cash-flow-positive early and sustained this positive cash flow to $1 billion revenue. Shareholder returns for being a top-performing Blueprint Company are more than compelling: an average of 87% returns to their shareholders while exceeding analysts' expectations 80% of the time!

6. The Management Team: Inside-Outside Leadership.
One of the pivotal essentials that enables the other steps to be executed simultaneously is a dynamic leadership pairing in which one leader (or team) faces outward toward markets, customers, alliances, and the community while the other leader (or team) focuses inward to optimize operations. Contrary to the somewhat popular belief that one leader is the leader, this inside-outside leadership pair is highly prevalent among Blueprint Companies: Microsoft, eBay, Yahoo! and Tractor Supply, to name just a few.

7. The Board: Made Up of Essentials Experts.
Blueprint boards are not packed with investors, as one would think. Blueprint companies recruited customers, alliance partners and other Blueprint CEOs to the board -- and that makes a big difference. I call them essentials experts because their role is linked to the shaping and execution of one or more of the essentials.

More than 90% of Blueprint Companies used five of these essentials. Applying one to your situation is good, three is better; applying five or more will turbo-charge your business to achieve exponential growth.

Are you an investor? Then use the Blueprint approach to screen for America's most successful growth companies!