What
are the two most important attributes of any business of any size? What are
those things that set a successful business apart from the “also ran” crowd? I
would suggest to you that these two critical success factors, without which any
organization is doomed to failure, are Innovation and Marketing. Get these two
pillars right and your business will grow exponentially. Get them wrong and it
will be hard to survive over the long term.
Those that I work with know that I
am an Apple fan. From my iPhone, to iPod, to iPad and MacBook Pro the beauty of
these products are evident and it is clear that there is no substitute for
design genius and production quality. Apple is regarded globally as one of the
world’s most innovative companies with its marketing genius acknowledged by
all, including its fiercest competitors. People do not merely buy Apple
products, they fall in love with them. The cult-like following inspires
thousands of people to queue outside Apple concept retail stores overnight in
anticipation of a new product release. They happily pay a premium for an Apple
product. All this made Apple the most valuable company in the world.
So if
Apple is the most admired company, who is the leading management thinker of our
time today? There is an organization called the Thinkers50, which describes its
awards as the Oscars of management thinking. Every two years it assesses and
ranks living management thinkers. In seven editions only four people have ever
topped the list. These have been management gurus Peter Drucker, Michael
Porter, CK Prahalad and for the past two award years, the man now regarded as
the absolute leader in this field, Clay Christensen. He is currently a
professor at the Harvard Business School and regarded as the father of
disruptive thinking. He has written nine management books, including The
Innovator’s Dilemma, which is regarded as one of the five best business books
ever written. His latest book, “How will you measure your life” is regarded by
some as possibly more influential that Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People and Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled.
So does a relatively
small estate agency on the KZN North Coast consider that the world’s leading
management thinker can provide useful insights into the world we live and work
in every day. My firm belief is yes, it
can. People are people – they are similar where ever you may go. People run
businesses and the application of a way of thinking to any given set of
challenges or opportunities can create profitable outcomes. I have witnessed
this disruptive innovation described by Christensen in our property industry
over the past five years. The innovation came through one architect who had the
genius to think well outside the adopted framework that had been ingrained in the
decade prior to his arrival. A single development company had the foresight to
nurture and channel the creative energy into a range of innovative home designs
that simply blew the customers away. Innovative design and the use of new
incredible materials were combined with a more sophisticated level of marketing
new homes. This immediately elevated the company above its peers. Within a few
years they had cornered the market in new builds and began to dominate while
other architects and builders could barely make ends meet. Innovation is
quickly copied by competitors (at least the smart ones), which is why
continuous improvement then becomes a requirement. If a small development
company and single architect on the north coast could do this, there is no reason
your business can’t do the same.
(Author: Andreas Wassenaar, publsihed in The Bugle 4 Dec 2013)
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