Our Process
The Sunflower Model Uniquely drives innovation, alignment and strategy. The Model informs the entrepreneur in critical product innovations and strategies to dominate in the marketplace.
Drilling Down to your Core Competencies: Core Competencies are those things that you or your company do well and further differentiate you in the market place. Core Competencies can include technology and engineering skill sets, intellectual property, brand, personnel databases, algorithms, network relationships, etc. These Core Competencies are Metaphorically the prime numbers of the irreducible; they should be unique, can be leveraged and prove a value to the customer. Core competencies fall into three categories: the obvious, the hidden and the missing. It is imperative to know your Core Competencies.
Drilling Down to your Core Competencies: Core Competencies are those things that you or your company do well and further differentiate you in the market place. Core Competencies can include technology and engineering skill sets, intellectual property, brand, personnel databases, algorithms, network relationships, etc. These Core Competencies are Metaphorically the prime numbers of the irreducible; they should be unique, can be leveraged and prove a value to the customer. Core competencies fall into three categories: the obvious, the hidden and the missing. It is imperative to know your Core Competencies.
Critical Decision Marking Amongst the Revenue Petals Using Matrix Modelling: The Sunflower Model helps to build alignment and qualify your Revenue Petals using matrix model.
A Revenue Petal Walkabout: Management walkabouts to customers are a valued part of the Sunflower Model, which helps to access and validate the outcomes of the process, including, but not limited to, verification of criteria, pain points and competitive dynamics.
Refining your Decision Matrix: Following the Revenue Petal Walkabout, a refinement process is undertaken.
Building a Suffocation Strategy: The process of a deliberate application of the Sunflower Model in the company, and the real competition, helps to inform the company of a ‘suffocation’ strategy to dominate the market.
Goals and Execution for a Successful Transformational Company: Strategy informs goals and lays the foundation for a tactical execution.
Then Sunflower Model uniquely drives innovation, alignment and strategy. The Model informs the entrepreneur in critical product innovations and strategies to dominate in the marketplace.
Past Client Testimonials
CEO, RightNow Tech
CEO, NetCracker
CEO, LookSmart
Our Entrepreneurs
Below is a sampling of companies that we have worked with and/or continue to work with, each of whom have made their mark in their respective industries.
About Rob Ryan
Rob Ryan is the founder, past chairman and CEO of Ascend Communications, and currently mentors entrepreneurs through his Entrepreneur America Mentors’ boot camps at his ranch in Montana or his botanical garden in Hawaii. Ryan earned national attention when he grew his 1989 start-up company, Ascend Communications, to more than $2 billion in sales. Lucent Technologies acquired Ascend in 1999 for approximately $20+ billion in what was termed at the time the “largest technology merger ever.”
Effectively, Ascend helped create the modern Internet by building all of the infrastructure equipment that powered the Internet worldwide. At the end of 1995, Rob won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California (Including Silicon Valley). Rob also was selected as the Cornell University Entrepreneur of the Year for 2002. Following Ascend’s success, Rob has helped build several start-up and early stage ventures into multi-billion dollar companies, including Right Now Technologies and Silicon Spice, among others, His entrepreneurial successes have transformed businesses using his Sunflower Model. Ryan Received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969 from Cornell University and bean his career as a systems analyst with Burroughs, then worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab on the first non-military extension of Arpanet, the precursor to the Intel portion of the Ethernet specification while working at Digital Equipment Corp. In the Boston area. He founded Softcom, Inc. In the early 1985, sold it in two years to Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. And worked there as Director of Research and Development until the late 1980s.
Recently Mr. Ryan, through one of his companies, Hero Education, formed the Sunflower Academy a Center for Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs will have access to the Sunflower Academy and its library of content, wherein they can view video segments on the elements of the Sunflower Model and Process, content on dynamic issues relating to scaling an enterprise, content on basic business operations, including but not limited sales and marketing, finance, human resources, manufacturing, etc.
Contact
Entrepreneur America Mentors
13 Orion Belt Way
Hamilton, Montana 59840
Phone – 406-363-0164
Rob Ryan: rryan@eamail.com