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The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is providing opportunities to disadvantaged businesses in Northeast Ohio for nearly $67.5 million in construction, supplies, trucking and professional services contracts. The work is for the new I-90 Innerbelt Bridge project. These business opportunities reflect a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) participation goal of 15 percent of the estimated $450 million design-build project. In an extraordinary move, ODOT has set the aspirational DBE participation goal to $90 million, or 20 percent of the project.

Dr. Rachel Talton has been named a recipient of one of the Top 10 Women Business Owners of Northeast Ohio awards by the Cleveland chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).

Dr. Beth Fitz Gibbon, a Senior Consultant with Synergy, is a practitioner in strategy, research, marketing, new business and new product development. She has consulted with and held senior management positions at Fortune 500 corporations, small and medium enterprises, and non-profits. Fitz Gibbon earned her doctorate in Business Management at Case Western Reserve University, where her research focused on the strategic outsourcing of innovation and its implications for long term competitiveness. She holds an MBA in International Marketing from Emory University and a BA in English and Psychology from Rutgers University.

Social media has forever changed the way businesses market goods and services. The use of blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, video-sharing sites, Facebook, and other social networking tools is growing exponentially, with interested parties both contributing and voraciously consuming content.

TRUST is the critical component many organizations miss when designing corporate strategy. It's one of those things we think we understand - yet we continually take it for granted. Toyota's recent woes are an important case study in the significance of building, driving, and maintaining trust in order to maintain profits. Collaborative engagement is one of the many positive deliverables gained from building trusted stakeholder relationships. One of our partners in TRUST, Christine Zust, found this piece today. Although the authors use a limited definition of trust (herein defined as "integrity," not the scientific definition of trust: i.e. competence, benevolence AND integrity), we hope you find article and the study valuable!

This article found on Marketingprof.com (Sept. 1, 2009) by John Wechsler points out the importance of maintaining a company's often-overlooked current customer base. Online surveys are an effective tool in gaining customer feedback and they play an important role in retaining customers. In this article Wechsler lends strategies that will entice customers to reply and therefore improve repsonse rate.

Focus groups, a form of qualitative research, are an integral mechanism for obtaining attitudes on products, services, packaging, experiences or advertisements. Found on BWSmallBiz (Oct./Nov. 2009) by Louise Lee correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau is a straight forward guide to focus groups. A bit of trivia: according to Wikipedia, the first focus groups were created at the Bureau of Applied Social Research by associate director, sociologist Robert K. Merton. The term itself was coined by psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter.

This timely article found on Branding Strategy Insider, Judy Franks, The Marketing Democracy outlines this coming year's top marketing trends. In it she shares her thoughts and conveys her expert opinion about the issues facing marketing professionals from reduced resources to wiser consumers. As marketing professionals we are faced with creating a solid strategy that produces results in a new and ever-changing climate.

With the holiday season upon us this timely article found on MarketingProfs.com, "The Role of Customer Gratitude in Relationship Marketing," by Robert W. Palmatier, Cheryl Burke Jarvis, Jennifer R. Bechkoff and Frank R. Kardes in the Journal of Marketing 2009, points out that customer gratitude may indeed play a role in consumer buying. Taking that extra step, as long as it's well intended, can produce positive lasting effects.

Synergy came across this great article in Customer Management iQ by Mark Ballard describing how the perfect balance of product, branding and customer service helped catapult his company into the national spotlight. The company's no frills strategy of consistent customer service and careful branding combined with insanely delicious products has garnered the attention of major magazines, television personalities and the Food Network.