When you say that successful
businesses are governed by skill and not chance, some people will try to
say no. Their argument often is that they know so many people who have
succeeded without any skill. While that argument may sound interesting, I
personally disagree with it. Skill does not necessarily have to be
technical. The ability to identify business opportunities, and taking
the necessary time and speed to explore availability of such
opportunities is also skill. Start-up and survival of businesses is
often dependent upon the entrepreneur’s ability to discover and exploit
opportunities. For you who are planning to start a business, first think
of the opportunity you want to exploit. You will discover an
opportunity when you recognize that somewhere in your community, or even
elsewhere there is market disequilibrium. An opportunity lies somewhere
where resources are currently being used at a sub-optimal level. In
such a situation you find that if you mobilize resources and perhaps use
them in a different way, you can do something people will actually pay
for. The bottom-line here is to reconfigure those resources to produce a
product or service that satisfies a need which is currently unmet. To
be able to do this, you need to question everything you see and hear and
always think about ways you could make things different. What comes
into your mind when you see everyone complaining about a given product
or service? Many technologies are becoming outdated because things
change so fast, do you just take this for granted? To be able to
understand what I’m talking about, you should start to think like a
little child. Children question everything they see and hear. To achieve
this, try not to let your past experience block your mind. Usually your
past experience will tend to make you think in a certain direction,
which may kill the creativity and risk taking elements in you. This is
especially true if you attempted before and failed. While you need to
think like a child when discovering opportunities, you need to use your
experience to evaluate these opportunities. The evaluation involves
asking key questions and finding answers to them. If exploited, what
need could this opportunity satisfy? How big and important is this need?
Where will I get the money to exploit the opportunity? What knowledge
and specific skills are needed to exploit this opportunity? Is the
opportunity at hand really exploitable? These and many more questions
will need answers. You may not ask these questions and get all the
answers overnight, it may take some time. Even if an idea comes when you
are in bed, get up and record it before you forget it. The problem with
most of us is that we forget the idea as soon we think about it. I will
also tell you that while opportunity discovery is a key for business
starters, it is more critical for existing businesses. As a business
person you must always be on alert for any new opportunities.
Remember that things around you change very fast. New and better
competitors are coming up every day. Your business must constantly be in
a dynamic state where you should be on the lookout for any
opportunities and must have capacity to reconfigure your business model
to exploit them. If customer needs change and you cannot change your
business model, your business will collapse. In fact, to guarantee
survival, you need not fight for market share – you need to fight for
opportunity share. In questioning everything, you should be able to see
tomorrow’s customer and his needs you to prepare your business to meet
these needs, develop the necessary capabilities and wait for the
opportunity. When the foreseen opportunity comes, you will certainly be
more prepared to take the biggest share of it. This way you will stay
ahead of your competitors.
Don’t just think of making money But think of ways of making money.
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