Successbegins with attitude and burgeons with innovation and action. If you’re thinking of business, add in value-creation and you’ve won. I awoke this morning, the first day of 2009, thinking that despite the downhill economic trends and the stormy, even depressing, forecasts, that we are at the threshold of an enormously exiting time. Enormous change will bring about enormous opportunity and with it will come entrepreneurs, the creative destruction of the old structures and the emergence of new ones.

It is gratifying to see a business story in The Times Herald Record, one of our local newspapers, echoing these sentiments in an interview with Gerald Celente, an internationally recognized trends forecaster and founder of the Trends Research Institute, also based here in New York’s Hudson Valley.

My self-appointed mission has been to bring forth communications as a strategic resource and a set of power tactics that when well organized significantly drive success. But, there is a fundamental, upon which which communications — a most ancient art-form now super energized 24/7 by Web 2.0 digital technologies — rests. That foundation is attitude. The change-maker in the economy has been and will continue to be entrepreneurs.

In reporter Christine Young’s piece this morning, Gerald Celente is quoted as saying that in the coming economic shakeup, change will open opportunities which, in turn, enterprising people will seize upon, and do well — indeed making new fortunes. I agree. The entrepreneur asks, “How can I add value? Given the changes taking place, what is needed?” Then her or she moves ahead — creating new ways and leaving the old ones behind. I like the notion of focusing on the entrepreneurial drive and its potential versus hand-wringing over troubled economic waters and gloomy forecasts.The currency of this is attitude – a way of thinking, energy of the spirit, a belief that one is not a hopeless victim but an agent for change. The great part of seeing 2009 arrive is the opportunities that lie ahead and the excitement capitalizing on them will bring. Dan Sullivan, one of today’s leading thinkers about entrepreneurs as well as a founder of The Strategic Coach program, talks about learning from failures, losses as well as wins, to learn from, of making the future always better than the past. I think the lesson for those of us who have been in business a while is to dust off our entreprneural instincts as we march into 2009. As we share the perspective with staff, customers and others, we’ll not only find new opportunities but the energy around us will change. What would happen if this went viral? Photo: New Year’s Eve in Dirnoch, Scotland by John Halsam