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208 Managing Customers Through Economic Cycles

the capacity to power as many as 100,000 homes, according
to energy department statistics.

Ryan MacNeil says Minas Basin is a classic example of the
benefits of diversification. “After 82 years in business Minas
Basin has a lot to teach us in terms of staying power,”
MacNeil says. Having diverse interests in the paper and
energy industries has helped “storm harden” the company,
MacNeil says, allowing it to thrive, even in times of economic
hardship.

For Travers, the keys to successfully steering a company
through a downturn include holding a line on costs, but also
looking through adversity to the underlying opportunity. “As
a manager, you need to get creative and closely examine
all the opportunities in front of you,” he says. “That’s true
whether you launched your company last year or last
century.”*

The web community

We’re at a historic turning point. We have an economy
going bust, which leads to greater insecurity within con-
sumers. This in turn leads to an increased desire (and
need) for control. At the same time, we have the Internet
enabling increased control, with its pervasive and collabo-
rative nature. Thus, with a downturned economic cycle,
consumers have never been so eager to control their
experiences. The virtual world of the Web is now the
enabling force to give them this control over their experi-
ences far beyond what they could ever have in the off-line
world.

* Source: Growing Through Adversity, Hants RDA Connections; Winter
2009.