When Mark Turnbull, Pittsburg director of economic development, talks about the keys to building Pittsburg’s economy, one of the first keys is always aiding local businesses to grow and expand.
Living up to that key was part of the reason the city, along with MAMTC, hosted Eureka! Profit 101 Growth Training, a training designed to help businesses, especially manufacturers, review their policies and improve their business.
“The purpose was to provide information on product analysis, diversification and development to our local businesses,” Turnbull said. “We were able to have a nice group of about 12-15 who were made up of both manufacturers and business managers in more service-related businesses.”
The four-hour training took place in the conference room at Fire Station No. 1, and covered sharpening a marketing message, using customer mining to improve the team’s innovation abilities, using collaboration with suppliers and innovators to speed time to market, how to think like a start-up in order to restart, reboot and revitalize profits.
“We’re going to see in the future if there should be some sort of follow up or if it’s a concept that should be expanded,” Turnbull said. “The purpose of this is to be more proactive in working with businesses, and to assist them in analyzing their current business while finding possible ways to expand those products.”
The entire program is set against a fictional case-study that parallels the current business conditions for many companies in today’s economy. It features real-world examples from Questech Decorative Tiles & Accessories, Johnson & Johnson, Simms Fishing Products, Cookshack Smokers, Servatii Pastry Shop & Deli, Prier Plumbing Products, Procter & Gamble and Global Viber Global Compressors.
“We wanted to provide them with different skills and approaches that they might not have tried before,” Turnbull said. “We were pleased with the attendance participants. The feedback that we received was that they enjoyed the session, and that they received some benefit from it.
“We want to assist our employers any way that we can … local businesses are the strength of any economic development,” Turnbull said. “That way, they can come out of the recession even stronger than they were before.”
PITTSBURG —
