– George F. Brown, Jr. is a business strategy consultant specializing in business-to-business growth issues. Reuters spoke to him about the topic of a new book he co-authored, CoDestiny: Overcome Your Growth Challenges by Helping Your Customers Overcome Theirs (Greenleaf Book Group). –

Q: You talk about what happens when a business becomes a bull’s eye, that is, the target of rivals looking to undercut by price. How does this happen to small companies when they’re rarely dominant players in their market?
A: Small business is rarely the largest provider to a large company, but I’ve seen quite a few instances where a small business is a key supplier to another small business.

Big Brother has the capability to watch – and respond to – your every spending move. That’s the premise behind Toovio, a startup that has created technology to help retailers and other consumer-facing companies market personalized offers to their customers in real time.

Think of the scene in the film “Minority Report”, when Tom Cruise’s character is walking through a mall while his eyes are getting scanned and he is being bombarded by a slew of personalized 3D ads.

The choice of area code carries more weight in consumer perception than zip code, according to more than 70 percent of small companies polled in a survey conducted by communications and messaging service company j2 Global Communications Inc.

Nearly the same percentage of business owners said having the right phone number gives them a competitive edge.