New Year, New Strategy?

I can't imagine there are too many of us who are sad to see the passing of 2009, at least in terms of business, budgets and jobs. I don't know of anyone who can't say it was a rough year, but it's also true that out of adversity rises opportunity, and I for one, still see the opportunities that lie ahead.

In the Ad Age article Planning Your Next Move in Ad Land, Ad Age asked its correspondents to look ahead to the coming year and identify the single-most important issue faced by the industries they cover in 2010.

Where are the opportunities in yours? Is now the time to get out ahead of your competition with something new and different? Is it the time to try that risky idea that just may put you way out ahead? Is it time to buck the trends altogether and be groundbreaking and innovative? In any event, for all of us exists the opportunity to look back at what worked and what didn't, what was worth it and what wasn't, what we would do again and what we would do different and learn something from all of it. Every experience is a learning opportunity, especially the challenging ones, because it's in those instances that true character is revealed. I've always believed that it's not the challenge that we should regret, but not learning from it. So with that being said, I'll close the door on 2009 as the year of learning, and open the door to 2010 as the year of opportunity.

That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
-Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever, 1984