Markets are vector quantities with magnitude (size) and direction (customer preferences). Unless your products evolve and adapt, you will remain a scalar quantity (only magnitude with no antenna to pick the directional patterns). Make 2022 the Year of Business Adaptability.
Every business model begins with an assumption on knowing and understanding the customer frictions with capabilities to provide products and services to fix them.
But most of the time, those assumptions must evolve. And that means, the greatest companies are those that have mastered the art of adaptability because in this world even the customers are changing.
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Understand. Adapt. Win.
Comments on LinkedIn Feed
Comment 1: Jeff Bezos stated in a letter to shareholders that Amazon will have a ‘Day One Mentality”. This simply means that Amazon will always have the mentality of a startup.
A Startup, by my definition, is a “young Tech or Tech Enabled organisation designed to seek, develop and validate a repeatable and scalable business model”. Therefore, Amazon having a Startup Mentality means that it’s always on an adventure, it just can’t stop, because then it will mature and decline. Companies are Living Entities, I call them “Borgs or Borganisms” (short for Business Organisms) because they possess all the characteristics of living organisms.
Big, Medium or Small; Young, Mature or Old, it’s all a State of Mind, a Lifestyle that can be assumed at will, but for many, it’s a Linear State of Life, a Reality they can’t escape from.
Jeff Bezos chose to keep Amazon Young Everyday by making it assume a Young State of Mind and as such, even though it’s big, it never loses its ability to be Ambitious and Grow, it never Matures and Declines, it never Ages and Dies.
You win by discerning and assuming the right state of mind for every given situation. You can’t stay Fixed in a Fast Changing World.
Comment 2: Product and market Adaptability is one of the key components of a successful company. The product should be able to suit customers changing needs and wants. It is also the key to customer retention and loyalty.
Comment 3: Business Vitality Competency is a business ability to reinvent and grow sustainably reading the market trend.
Relying on the current trend and performance will always short-lived business models thereby making adaptability difficult.
Now a business vitality is not measured in the current performance because the trend that may have produced such current result may not be appropriate to respond to due to the ever present customers’ dynamic requirements.
The common metrics used by businesses (growth, profitability and market share) measure what has happened in the past with little regard for what will happen in the future.
Therefore for a business to maintain vitality and effectively adapt it must take a futuristic look into what demands may look like (not neglecting the present) because customers are the investors according to Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe.
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