How do you discover new and innovative initiatives that don't invite a lot of risk and don't cost a great deal of money?

forwarDynamics is centered on Brett Rogers, a serial entrepreneur, technologist, marketer, and powerful optimist who works to make ideas become profitable reality. forwarDynamics reaches out to other partners as needed to help you put into motion the best insight to move your business forward.

Here's how forwarDynamics approaches the challenge of finding new, low-cost innovations...

Imagine that you own a small boutique for women, in a location that almost requires you to drive to it expressly for the purpose of shopping there, and the local economy struggles to stay above water. If you're the owner and business is in a rough patch lately, is your first thought to cut costs, or to find ways to grow the business?

A business owner might be tempted to look for ways to cut cost to wait it out, capture the business that they could, and outlast the drought. When the money's tight, spending on new marketing and new product brings risk.

If there is a way to increase revenue to keep your company profitable, that's always better. To help discover the possibilities, I asked a few questions:

• Do you have customers who are stark, raving fans of what you provide?
• Are they fans of a particular line of product?
• How do people learn about your store?
• How far will they come to shop there?
• Do you ever go to them, in some fashion?

The answers I got back were as follows:

• Yes. Some of our customers love our service and have an affinity for some product lines.
• People hear about the store mostly through word-of-mouth.
• Some of our customers will drive 100 miles to shop here.
• Yes, sometimes we've been asked to demo our products to larger groups.

A store that has a problem of being in an unobvious and fixed location simply has to expand its storefront into the community in some way. The owner worked a great deal of hours, so any solution should not demand more of the store's owner.

The forwarDynamics suggestion: why not take some of the higher-end product lines that appeal to the business' stark, raving fans and allow the fans to host home shopping parties, like Silpada and Tupperware do? The twist here is that it's usually not local retailers that offer this option - but in this case, it made great sense:

• The enthusiastic fans will bring their friends to the party and have a great time around the centerpiece of the business and its products.
• The host can earn maybe $150 of free product for every $1,000 ordered.
• It serves as free marketing to those who attend.
• It extends not only the storefront by putting it into the homes of those who love the business, but it also extends the store hours without requiring the business owner.
• There's no limit to how large this inititaive can become.

This solution was win-win-win for everyone involved. The beauty of this approach is that it cost the company very little to execute it, which is typical of how forwarDynamics opens new markets and opportunities. Solutions like this could make the difference between net loss and net profit.

Take a look at one of forwarDynamics' tools, the RAISED survey.