Happy new year! I hope that your celebrations were fun and that your 2012 is not only happy, healthy and prosperous, but also is everything you hope it will be.

I’m back to blogging after a rather long hiatus (at least that’s one of my goals for 2012 – it’ll be obvious to you if I keep that promise). Like all of the things we all hope 2012 will bring, this won’t happen just for new year’s day or a few weeks after. To keep that promise, I will have to keep working at it for the whole year.

Which brings me to the topic of the day: Relationships. This year DS3 will increase our focus on helping our clients build, improve and maximize the value of relationships with their customers, partners, suppliers and other key constituencies.

Just like with personal relationships, I believe that real value for businesses is created through relationships. Relationships hold the key to revenue and business growth, but maybe more importantly, they hold the seeds of market disruption and dominance. The stronger and broader your customer relationships, the better you will be at becoming disruptive in your market, or defending against being disruptive.

Your customer, partner and supplier relationships are a source (sometimes the only source) of competitive advantage. Your competitors will have a hard time taking customers who value your business and the value you provide.

We will be helping companies understand the range of sources – many hidden – of value in these relationships and help identify the typically unseen opportunities that can help your business make disruptive progress in your market.

But just like personal relationships, we all know business relationships take time and effort to build and maintain. And they require that all parties find compatible interest and value. We look forward to helping you understand what creates that common value, and how you can better use your resources to maximize the relationships and opportunities that make the most sense for your business.

So check back here for tips and tricks to help improve your relationships, and a few rants on what some are doing wrong (and how to avoid it).

And if you want to create disruptive opportunities by maximizing the value of your business relationships, contact us.

Start the conversation: how have your customer relationships helped you create disruptive opportunities? Chime in!