What is entrepreneurship without innovation?

One single reason why entrepreneurs are finding it harder to get a foothold in their industry is the lack of innovation. Someone wakes up one morning and decides that he is going to start a business based on his skills in welding. What is he doing differently? Nothing. Are his prices cheaper than others? No! Is his service delivery process faster than others? No! Is there something exceptional about his customer service? No!

So what exactly makes him special? Nothing!

He becomes just another player in the space. Every attempt to get customers to keep meeting a brick wall because people really do not see why they should leave the established competition to patronize you. There is nothing special about what you do, how you do it, or what you charge for it. There is no added benefit to be gotten from patronizing you. The list goes on and on.

This is more of what we see around these days — A lot of businesses springing up with no clear innovation. ‘Entrepreneurs’ are venturing into different sectors and industries without a clear difference in what they want to offer when compared to the established competition. This is the reason some of them will struggle for months and eventually fold up.

Entrepreneurship should be about innovation, and loosely speaking, we could say that innovation is a new, easier, faster, better, and/or cheaper way of doing things. If you are going into an established industry to compete with existing brands, you already know that they have a lot of advantages over you. Consumers know and patronize them already so they already have their market share. They have the economies of scale to their advantage, and can naturally afford to give out their services and products at reduced prices when compared to you. They would probably have a strong and qualified team to deliver optimum services.

The only thing you can have as your competitive advantage is your innovation. If you are coming in to do what existing brands already do, there is no reason to choose you over them. Your business should be hinged on what you do differently, what you bring into the market that the competition does not. You should be able to clearly define what you bring to the table that is different from what the market can get elsewhere. If you don’t have innovation, you become just another player in a space that is already choked with the competition.