Consider this: These are exactly the times to plan for innovation and growth, to jump ahead in the competitive rankings.

Here are 10 brainstorming ideas to help your company generate growth:

1. Culture change: Adapt your business culture to generate new ideas, and tackle new markets. Promote the best and brightest within your company. Recruit new people to spice up the knowledge mix.
2. Design differently: Have you noticed that all industrial products look alike - bulky, ugly and heavy? Don't dumb-down your products; go way-out, high-tech, with advanced features that will "wow" your customers.
3. Encourage innovation: Allow novel or different ideas to bubble up. Encourage your staff to join innovative groups and organizations.
4. Partnerships: Some of the smartest people are not in your company, but somewhere else in the world. Operate with crowd-sourced designs, released under share-friendly licensing. Build virtual teams.
5. Advanced manufacturing: Reverse offshore outsourcing. Produce cheaper and better at your own facilities. Examine advanced manufacturing opportunities.
6. Pricing paradigms: Plan for high-tech products with high margins. Consider new and different cost and pricing structures. Pursue high Volume through disruptive products and pricing.
7. Inbound marketing: Leverage online technology to find and get found by potential customers. Use Internet tools and methodologies to optimize company Web presence and extend reach. Maximize use of social networks to develop and utilize customer feedback and opinions.
8. Advertising: Stop advertising to the same-old customers the same-old ways. Generate new promotions to attract new customers. Refine your advertising with more frequent, Web-orientated, (pay-per-click) pricing.
9. Sales channels: Find sales channels that know your target audience and can drive your solution-specific products. Don't go to the same-old, same-old conferences and shows.
10. Commitment: This kind of change can only start at the top. The champion must be the CEO, demanding fresh thinking with measurable results. Senior managers must be committed, with incentives to adopt innovative behaviors, and disincentives for lack of results. A practical approach is to split off a part of the company, or acquire an innovative start-up, to pursue the new paradigm.