Archive for April 12th, 2007
Do the common thing uncommonly well!
Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Recent Graduates
In my recent visit with one of our advisors, I learnt this simple and powerful mantra for technology oriented companies – “Do the common thing uncommonly well!”
In my previous post, I had already explained that for technology startups, positioning themselves in the "new product & existing market" domain is one of the vital steps towards startup success. I have been struggling a lot on these aspects, and that made me to think, how do we win in the existing market. As there are already known and big players who are penetrated well in that market, then where is the scope for startups.
I think, the idea behind "new product" in the "existing market" is not that we need to come up with the breakthrough technology. It is about filling the innovations in the existing products. And thats where doing common things uncommonly well comes into a picture. I had also written a post on value innovation approach of entrepreneurs.
We engineers, generally are product focused. Our business model is based on technology advantages. Its like our startups are pushing technologies on to the market.
On the other hand, we can enter into a segment where there is a pull from the market. After entering at commodity level of an existing but growing market, we can distinguish ourselves by innovations, exceptional services, and cost factors.
Of course, there are many more factors to decide the positioning aspect, but unless you are a PhD with a breakthrough research idea, or have a solid work experience under your belt, it is hard to play with the technology push approach. It should be safer to start with the market pull approach, and then eventually emerge as a technology push winner.
I hope this approach to scrutinize your idea will help you to position yourself better in the market so that you make it a successful startup.
