Deep economic transformations – and, we are surely in the middle of one today – shake up the very ingredients that go into a business profit formula. After a routine economic cycle bottoms, companies rebound to make money much the same way as they always did. But, in a watershed shakeup, those few survivor caterpillars in the business jungle emerge as spanking new, scarcely recognizable butterflies.

Over recent months, these blogs have talked at length about how the worlds of branding and retailing are being reconstructed. We are consultants who specialize in this practice and know it well. However, the truth is, the economic downturn is redefining us as much as the businesses we advise!

G+G enjoys a stellar reputation as a creative consultancy – a premier integrator. We launch and refurbish brands and trademarks in a host of industries. The care and nurturing of intellectual-property intangibles is our mainstay – total turnkey programs spanning concept development through to the rigors of highly detailed implementation. We’ll continue to foster and safeguard our core strength, but we are also finding the marketplace has a significant unserved appetite: Strong, established clients want to exploit their intellectual property treasure chest, but often lack the development staff and capital in-house to do so. That raises a vital question: Does an in-house squeeze on talent and capital necessarily freeze expansion?

In this new world of business development, firms are anxious to extend permission to reliable outside partners, who in turn create A-to-Z entrepreneurial packages that maximize brands.

What forces are causing this rearrangement to happen? Fundamental changes are happening in each of the different sectors involved: manufacturers and retailers, consultancies, and the capital markets. This blog – the first of a series – looks at this change from the standpoint of the traditional initiators of strategic change:

• Manufacturers and retailers remain under extreme pressure not to add internal staff.

• Belt-tightening has gone far beyond simply outsourcing arms-and-legs for development projects. Instead, businesses want fully packaged brand-extension options brought to them.

• While enlightened CEOs have sincerely dedicated their “corner offices” to their brands, top managers and their teams are dedicated to juggling short-term gyrations with long-term positioning of the company. They shun the time-exhausting burden of incubating projects. Nor do they want to deplete the cash resources in their existing businesses.

The squeeze is having an inevitable consequence: Growth and development of established brands is becoming less of an owner-initiated proposition. It’s closer to licensing prime commercial real estate to joint venture partners with the confidence that it will be developed harmoniously with their core brands . . . and even better than manufacturers or retailers could do it themselves.