Trials of the Entrepreneur
Whether it’s Steve Jobs or yours truly, every entrepreneur has committed many mistakes and been victim to rejection and letdowns along their entrepreneurial journey. These arrows of misfortune, though agonizing, will teach you more about business than any coach, or guru ever could.
I’m no exception, I have learned a lot from my failures, and they have yet to kill me. This is an opportunity to share some knowledge I gained from my experiences. Without further ado, here are 5 tips (read as lessons) to survive the “entrepreneur fail test” that were worth confessing, once I survived them.
1. Success isn’t final
Despite how booming you are, understand that you may fall short again. ‘Loser’ tag is just fine as long as you’re ready to learn. It will motivate you to make wiser, enhanced assessments. The sooner you understand that your business has some beautiful and ugly parts, and there is such a thing as the “God Complex”, you’ll raise your stakes as a leader.
2. Keep in mind: No returns, no business
It’s as simple as that! Initiate a viable business for yourself, and not the one rooted in future skills or unreal investment. If your real business can make it, you will learn how to acquire other firms in the future or raise funding sources. But, relying on the latter path as a surefire tactic is just dumb and can easily backfire on your dreams. Upshot: Quit guessing about coming days from now, and laser-focus on present-day. Adopt, or perish.
3. Keep It Simple
As your business gets underway, and you think you can do more than a few things perfectly at once, well you’re probably not going anywhere. From PayPal to Google, everything stands out like a beacon today. These companies were developed by clear-cut plans, balanced budgets, and only then, did they expand. Keep your business/start up plan uncomplicated; because if it’s not easy, you’re doomed.
4. Be practical
You are an ordinary person attempting extraordinary things, As you are human, the mistake easily made is to believe your own nonsense, so be alert, stop conceiving you as a champion imagining your thought is brainy, and go motivate yourself better.
5. Think outside the box
Murphy’s Law in business is the likely scenario. If you predict 500 clients, you might get around 100. If you project a contract to seal within 10 weeks, it might creep up to 20. What I’m trying to say here is you invariably need to be prepared for these kinds of worst-case scenarios and have fitting backup plans for every circumstances. Don’t look at the problems with one solution in mind, commit yourself to think creatively. Extend yourself by brainstorming about options for every uncertainty and you’ll turn into a better business person.
The Future of Employment
Article by Corri Byrne, dLook General Manager - Like dLook on Facebook
What are your plans for team expansion? Are you employing full time or on a project basis? In-sourced or outsourced? How is the employment landscape changing with technology?
Worldwide Changes in Employment
Government argues that we need more stimuli and the opposition argues that we need more tax cuts to increase demand. There is some truth in both arguments, but that’s not the whole story.
There is a restructuring going on in economies worldwide, jobs are moving to contracted people on value / relevance based terms; that are reviewed by project rather than traditional annual arrangements. Individuals are becoming more like actors / directors / producers and crew on movie sets.
The internet economy is ushering in a new wave of networked project based people working in enterprises with staggering capital values. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are classed as US companies, when in reality they are becoming stateless organizations that are global in their reach.
While the company capital valuations are huge, they cumulatively employ less than 20,000 people. That’s not a lot of people, relative to their valuations, and while they’re all hiring today, they are largely looking for specific skill sets, suited to needs of “the movie” being made today.
The people resume of the future will call for people who have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t do, as well as people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs (value) every day, in a market that changes @ NetSpeed.
Today’s college grads need to be aware that the rising trend in Silicon Valley is to evaluate employees every quarter, not annually. Because the merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job.
Employers or should I say Prime Contracting parties are asking of contract candidates: Can this contactor add value every hour, every day — more than a contractor in China, India, Poland or Russia? Can they add significant value to my prime contract position in the market place, can they adapt to my evolving role in the current project; and can they reinvent themselves for the projects of tomorrow? And can they become continuous self learning organisms that adapt to continuous market place change, so that as a federated group we can adapt and export more into the fastest-growing global markets?
In today’s interrelated, interconnected and intelligent networked world, more and more enterprises will evolve into these federated networks that will not hire sub contracting people who don’t fulfill those criteria.
This will require a new mind-set and skill set to compete. The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions in which entrepreneurs start companies is what it’s now like for all of us planning careers in a world filled by dynamic points of stability. Each point of dynamic stability has the potential to have a catalytic affect on all other points of the federated networks that we may become part of.
In accordance with the Chinese proverb “we do indeed live in interesting time”
Business Models Must Be Built to Adapt
In every market there are industry captains that excel at executing their current business model, that’s what makes them industry leaders.
However most of them slowly become hostages of the status quo, “the way we do things round here slowly morphs into the way we think round here”
History is littered with industry captains that lose out to start up companies who appear from nowhere, and in a few short years overtake the established leader.
A New Paradigm
Cloud computing is bringing in a new disruptive economic environment that will make these transitions occur @ NetSpeed.
This speed of change and market volatility challenges the sustainability of “business as usual” in many markets, placing enormous pressure on any individual enterprise’s ability to respond to market disruption in a timely manner, as most enterprises are now heavily reliant on a multiplicity of external supply partner relationships to produce and deliver their products and services to market.
What’s The Main Frame
Looking back at history, IBM in the 1960’s and 70’s dominated the mainframe computer market, and it did so very successfully against competitors like ICL (UK), Bull (France), Univac, Honeywell, Fujitsu and CDC.
IBM quickly achieved value keystone status within the ecosystems it competed in. IBM’s technology capability, capacity, service level availabilities, integrated sales channels and associated high cost structures were sustained by burgeoning mainframe margins. IBM’s cost base expanded as their enterprise structure grew to manage and support the strategic relationships they forged with their customers.
Their customers (usually large enterprises) were generally value keystone players in their respective ecosystems and also on the trail of sustaining their existing capabilities and capacities.
This capability and value sustaining model utilised by customer and supplier resulted in creating incremental innovations that maintained and improved the business as usual approach in the computer industry.
Consequently IBM largely missed out on the minicomputer market to new competitors such as DEC, Prime, Data General Etc. Subsequent to the minicomputer market, IBM misread the PC market by seeing the value opportunity in the production of PC’s rather than the associated operating systems and software services that supported them.
In the case of DEC and Prime, who had successfully led IBM in the minicomputer business, they completely missed out on the PC market.
The IBM PC division has since been sold to Lenovo (China).
Not Robinson Crusoe
The list of market failure examples is endless and applicable to any industry. All of the above quoted enterprises had the capabilities, resources and capacities to test the relevance of their strategy and value assumptions within their ecosystems; and respond to the disruptive challenges they faced. Yet none of them did so, they lacked the insight to recognise and adapt to change in their business ecosystems.
It appears as if incumbent market leaders throughout history spent their time gathering evidence to support the belief that their strategies, business models and supporting value assumptions were permanently relevant and sustainable.
Give Me the Life Raft
So what’s the lesson to be learnt?
All enterprises and their capabilities, strategies, value assumptions, capacities and availabilities within an ecosystem are dynamically interlinked with their ecosystem partners.
Existing capabilities, capacities and business models, are not permanent and profitable belief systems to be defended at all costs.
Built to Adapt
Article by Corri Byrne, dLook General Manager - Like dLook on Facebook
Is your business ready for disruption? Upheaval? What are the things you can do to future proof your business? This article explores business models that are built to adapt.
Business Models need to be Built to Adapt
In every market there are industry captains that excel at executing their current business model, that’s what makes them industry leaders.
However most of them slowly become hostages of the status quo - “the way we do things round here slowly morphs into the way we think round here.”
History is littered with industry captains that lose out to start-up companies who appear from nowhere, and in a few short years overtake the established leader.
Disrupting the Landscape
Cloud computing is bringing in a new disruptive economic environment that will make these transitions occur @ NetSpeed.
This speed of change and market volatility challenges the sustainability of “business as usual” in many markets, placing enormous pressure on any individual enterprise’s ability to respond to market disruption in a timely manner, as most enterprises are now heavily reliant on a multiplicity of external supply partner relationships to produce and deliver their products and services to market.
Looking back at history, IBM in the 1960’s and 70’s dominated the mainframe computer market, and it did so very successfully against competitors like ICL (UK), Bull (France), Univac, Honeywell, Fujitsu and CDC.
IBM quickly achieved value keystone status within the ecosystems it competed in.
IBM’s technology capability, capacity, service level availabilities, integrated sales channels and associated high cost structures were sustained by burgeoning mainframe margins. IBM’s cost base expanded as their enterprise structure grew to manage and support the strategic relationships they forged with their customers.
Their customers (usually large enterprises) were generally value keystone players in their respective ecosystems and also on the trail of sustaining their existing capabilities and capacities.
This capability and value sustaining model utilised by customer and supplier resulted in creating incremental innovations that maintained and improved the business as usual approach in the computer industry.
Consequently IBM largely missed out on the minicomputer market to new competitors such as DEC, Prime, Data General Etc. Subsequent to the minicomputer market, IBM misread the PC market by seeing the value opportunity in the production of PC’s rather than the associated operating systems and software services that supported them. In the case of DEC and Prime, who had successfully led IBM in the minicomputer business, they completely missed out on the PC market.
The IBM PC division has since been sold to Lenovo (China).
Death is Part of the Cycle
The list of market failure examples is endless and applicable to any industry.
All of the above quoted enterprises had the capabilities, resources and capacities to test the relevance of their strategy and value assumptions within their ecosystems; and respond to the disruptive challenges they faced. Yet none of them did so, they lacked the insight to recognise and adapt to change in their business ecosystems.
It appears as if incumbent market leaders throughout history spent their time gathering evidence to support the belief that their strategies, business models and supporting value assumptions were permanently relevant and sustainable.
Lessons to be Learnt
So what can be gleaned from these cyclical trends:
- All enterprises and their capabilities, strategies, value assumptions, capacities and availabilities within an ecosystem are dynamically interlinked with their ecosystem partners.
- Existing capabilities, capacities and business models, are not permanent and profitable belief systems to be defended at all costs.
Whether you are dominating your market or a new entrant, it is important to maintain an adaptable business model, focused on the rapidly changing market conditions. Maintain an appreciation that your business is completely reliant on numerous external factors - all of which could significantly impact your market position, long term strategy plans or entire industry relevance.
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