Where Strategy Meets Execution.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Tara M. Hernandez. She is the Marketing & Communications Director at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We talked about airport ownership structures, air service development, marketing strategies, branding, and a lot more.
The last step of any investment deal is a successful exit – Harvesting. Notice that this statement says nothing about profitability, but rather the ability to walk away from a given deal. In the aviation industry, specifically pilot training, there is a proverb that says “any landing you walk away from, is a good landing.” Most landings are smooth and uneventful, but this statement technically includes crash landing an airplane and surviving the crash. In this regard, harvesting is the same way, ideally, one would like a nice, uneventful, and profitable exit, but should not discard the real possibility of a negative exit. David Amis and Howard Stevenson describe harvesting as, “the endgame of early-stage investments, the financial score by which you will measure your success” (p. 287, 2001). With this thinking in mind, below are some brief descriptions and highlights regarding positive and negative harvesting scenarios. Continue reading “Harvesting (7th Fundamental of Early-Stage Investing)”