Friday, March 18, 2005

Thoughts on Business

I was thinking just now about business and how it runs. Basically, a business simply contains 3 things.

1 - Providing (a) service(s)
Be it a product, a way to do things, creating applications, and so on, everything is based on providing a service. That's what the main business runs on, and depends on.

2 - Creating Awareness
You have to make known of what your business does, and let people know it's benefits and how it is different from others and so on. This in it's way is to create awareness, or advertising, or social networking, or whatever you call it. It basically boils down to creating awareness for your business.

3 - Innovation
As mentioned above, you need to let people know how your service is different from others. Therefore you'll need to innovate, and come out with something unique for your "service". Why I put this last is because innovation in itself is quite difficult to achieve, and it requires someone of certain calibre to handle it. Most businesses do not have that calibre. But they still fulfill the first 2 criterias on business.

These are just my thoughts on business, as I was talking to a friend. I don't study business or marketing or what have you, so I might be wrong, or this might be extremely obvious to everyone, but I just find it quite interesting that every business must at least fulfill 2 of the criterias.

Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Feel free to comment.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a good start and there is more:
- Execution excellence: Make sure your results are consistent and meet customer expectations
- Market focus: Gone are the days where your create a product and awareness. You need to listen to the market to find out what is needed or what you could generate a need for. Of course both must be in the scope of your abilities
- Finance: Manage your cashflow. I've seen many businesses falter soly on wrong money timing (the project payment next month doesn't help if you have to pay your rent tomorrow)
- People: If you want to grow to a sustainable size you need to make your business so attractive, that others want to work for you or with you
- Sustainability: What's your plan B? How continue if the product takes off slower than expected. What's next when the product cycle runs off. How to keep customers happy etc.
- Fun: Don't do a business if it is no fun to do. Be clear: fun is very individual. It can be your ever increasing bank account or a challenging project.
.... and and and
my 2c

icelava said...

I suppose those are the "fun & exciting" aspects of business. But don't ever forget the behind-curtain, and crucial, operations like bookkeeping, tax, human resource, employee salaries and benefits, insurance, office renovations, equipment, rent and loans, etc.

These are the things that tell me I am not cut out to run a business.

triplez said...

Hmmm, my my. This post has gotten the interest of so many people. 2 is alot for me already, since I know you guys are the ONLY 2 who read my blog. LOL!

Anyway, from what I think, Market Focus is inconsequencial. My friend once told me; A businessman knows what the market demands and satisfies it; An entreprenuer creates the market demand.

Of course naturally not many people really have the ability to know what the demand is, let alone create demand.

I agree with Stephan entirely on the other points too. But I think having FUN is the most important.

As for icelava, all these book-keeping and taxing and what have you, you can actually outsource it to companies to handle it for you. The beauty of outsourcing. Nowadays you can practically outsource anything.

Anonymous said...

... that will outsource your profits too. My taxes and the book keepting for the IRS always were done by an external. However to RUN the company this delay is too long, so I do on-the-spot bookkeeping inhouse.
;-) stw