Starting a Business QuickStart Guide. Ken Colwell PhD MBA
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Название: Starting a Business QuickStart Guide
Автор: Ken Colwell PhD MBA
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Экономика
isbn: 9781945051579
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Q: What about problems that customers may not be aware of? How do you solve a problem for a customer that they themselves don’t have in focus?
Answer: A great example is the story of the iPod. iPods solved a number of problems for consumers that they hadn’t even realized were problems. The ability to keep a library of songs right on your device, to make custom playlists, and to deliver via download instead of making a trip to the store made products the iPod a clear winner over traditional CD players. The consumers who purchased iPod didn’t have a burning need to replace their CD players. They were responding to the ways in which new technology provided a superior solution to how they wanted to experience music.
It Doesn’t Exist Independently of the Entrepreneur
In the same way that great opportunities are not obvious to others, great opportunities do not exist independently of the entrepreneur. The ability to develop the idea into an opportunity and to see the ways in which it provides value and can be executed (and ultimately is executed) are completely reliant on the entrepreneur and his or her entrepreneurial thumbprint. A popular misconception is that opportunities are like cars—plop anyone with a license in the driver’s seat and the vehicle will get to its destination. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Some Considerations About Opportunities
With the number of buzzwords and conflicting information that gets thrown around regarding the sources of opportunities and how to cultivate them, it is worth looking at the answers to common questions concerning the nature of opportunities.
Should I be looking for opportunities in growth industries?If your passion and skill set take you there, then yes. What makes the opportunity valuable is its ability to be executed, to provide value to customers, and to be accomplished in a strategic manner, all within the context of your entrepreneurial thumbprint. In that respect, the type of industry isn’t as crucial to the value of the opportunity. Seeking opportunity in a “hot” industry just to be in a hot industry will do more harm than good, especially if that industry is at odds with your entrepreneurial thumbprint.
What about established markets that are dominated by entrenched competitors?Keep in mind that new ventures can almost never compete on price. A new market entrant simply can’t tackle an entrenched competitor head on. If there is a strategic position that your venture can occupy that allows you to compete indirectly with existing market players, then the opportunity might not be a bad one.
Should I be looking for “disruptive” opportunities?“Disruption” is a buzzword that is popular in tech startups from Silicon Valley. The term originated from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in the late ’90s.3 He defined the concept of “disruptive innovation” as a principle whereby entrenched market players could be unseated by smaller rivals who offered simpler or less costly solutions. The popularity of the term’s use to sell Silicon Valley tech startups to investors has eroded the meaning of the term to the point that it is irrelevant to entrepreneurs at large. Don’t get me wrong—disruptive technologies are a real thing and have a profound effect on shaping industries over the long term. However, disruption is not a strategy, and it shouldn’t be a major consideration when assessing an opportunity.
The Nature of Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is the sum of conditions that put one business in a superior or favorable position over another. Competitive advantage is something of a law of the jungle for the business world. If an opportunity cannot be strategically executed in a space where you can maintain competitive advantage over rivals, then the opportunity is not a good one. In his often-cited 1991 paper in the Journal of Management, economist and professor Jay Barney laid out a comprehensive look at competitive advantage by examining how it is formed, how it is sustained, and how it is exploited by firms. Competitive advantage stems from resources, competencies, or capabilities possessed by your company that have the following attributes:
Valuable to the customerValue is the name of the game. It is critical that what you do better than your rivals also provide value to your customers (otherwise it doesn’t produce much of an advantage).
Rare, or hard to come byThe rarer your sources of competitive advantage, the more difficult they are to duplicate and the more differentiated your business will be from competitors.
Not easily imitatedA source of competitive advantage that is easily imitated isn’t very robust. The rarer and more unique your sources of competitive advantage, the better.
Not easily substitutedIf a competitor can overcome your competitive advantage by doing something else that they are good at, your advantage is not sustainable.
Q: Where does competitive advantage come from?
Answer: The biggest source of competitive advantage is generated by what are known as distinctive competencies, which are a combination of best practices and technical skills that come together in a valuable and creative way that is difficult to beat by your competitors. For some organizations, distinctive competencies can be less tangible aspects of their business, such as their culture. An organization’s culture is the culmination of its vision, way of doing things, and perspective, or worldview. For others, superior execution that allows them to provide overwhelming value to the customer is their source of distinctive advantage. Ideally, as many organizational aspects as possible come together as distinctive competencies.
For new ventures, competitive advantage rarely stems from a narrow skill set or intellectual property such as a patent. New ventures do have a few tricks up their sleeves, however, when it comes to distinctive competencies:
AgilityStartups can—and often must—change direction completely at the drop of a hat. This is an inherent advantage over larger, more established businesses that must respond to changes in a much slower way. Is there a new customer segment that can be targeted? A startup can jump on top of openings like that very quickly. The same goes for emerging trends or new technology. Startups are speedboats compared to the ocean liners that are their established competition.
Specialized KnowledgeAs we have discussed, every entrepreneur has their own unique thumbprint of skills, knowledge, experience, and perspective. These are often an initial source of competitive advantage.
Team CohesionStartups are made up of smaller teams than their larger competitors, out of necessity. Often, team members are cross-trained or take an active role in multiple areas of the business, meaning that each is very familiar with many aspects of the business. Additionally, working in smaller groups means that the team is often very close-knit and can respond faster to challenges.
Less BureaucracyRed tape and “formal business practices” are a necessity of running larger, established businesses, but the size and agility of startups means that critical decisions can be made faster, and with less back-and-forth.
Distinctive competencies come together to form the competitive advantages that allow new ventures to compete. For example, if a firm competes on price, that’s a competitive advantage. That advantage is made possible through distinctive competencies such as superior execution СКАЧАТЬ