The Companies of Today, The Industries of Tomorrow

Today´s Market

The framework of the world´s present market, a market driven by fast evolving geo-economic relations, set on the dynamic of a more open commerce supported by a diverse range of nations and complemented on the widest information flow (ever seen before) that globalization and technology has prompted, constructs the basis of the environment in which companies thrive and compete nowadays. Value creation in terms of progress, development and persistent improvement must be the cornerstones of both the current operating companies that lead the markets in all industries, but more specifically to all the companies (recently founded or) to be founded now. These startups and entrepreneurial companies looking forward to succeed in today´s market will in the next decades, by competitive and sustainable advantages, lead the change to propitiate the next technological jump that will (again) re-transform the way humanity lives, communicates and interacts.

Living Organisms

As “the fortune 500 teller” Geoffrey West states, companies are no other than living organisms part of a complex and constantly changing environment. Every company operates in an ecosystem of relentless observation focused in the understating of a market share, the individuals that compose it and the other players in the environment whom also have the power and control to influence or modify it.

“The one who owns the information, also owns the power”, is still a phrase to live by; but most significantly than the observation and gathering of information, is the processing and analysis of of it specially in a complex market like the one mentioned before, a market formed by a widespread variety of polyhedral relations, shaped by the consequences that derivate from the decisions taken by the involved actors. The ability to understand our environment, empowers us to predict it and consequently modify it, giving us the capacity to extend and maximize our company’s life spawn.

An Innovative Value Proposition

Ideally, value creation in terms of breakthroughs, progress and development must aim to the improvement of humanity and its environment; by the means of the products, services and institutions companies ought to contribute to that value creation in circumstances that dimension far beyond financial profit and more towards a truly perceived benefit. Throughout innovation, companies like Google, Amazon, Tesla (among others), all at the fore front of their industries, have reached this level of value creation, managing not only to lead in their industries. On the other side, probably by natural selection, this innovation competition has also but also to defined the express market exits of all of those other companies that couldn’t keep up. With no need to share specific names, the actions that a company performs defines its opportunities and its future. Clarifying and taking apart extraordinary cases, its easy to identify that those companies failed because of the misunderstanding of their market according to their business models, a misuse of the tools and technology available today or just because of the “common trend” of being unable to set up new challenges to promote growth and continuous improvement. The companies that lack on capacity to create change and generate the expected and needed true value throughout innovation and execution, not only aren’t meant to be the industries of tomorrow, none of them have either the necessary stature nor the ability to be one.

Insightful Innovation

Our capacity to closely and divergently observe market segments and institutions is directly proportional to our capacity to successfully innovate and change them, as long as we are able to discover and understand the insightful information behind the analysis of that observation. Complementary to what we mentioned before, the lack of capacity to innovate is also directly proportional to the increment on risk rates that prejudice and terminate the companies, also one of the common trends on non competitive companies.

The companies of today must (at least) meet the needs of today´s market a pretty complex one we must admit, but the industries of tomorrow must be prepared to anticipate the fluctuation and evolution of those markets characteristics. The companies looking forward to meet the needs of that future market must not only “think out side the box” to generate insights, these game changers have to be able to look in other “analogue and apparently disassociated” boxes to extract the unrecognized but valuable information each differentiable industry possesses that will lead them to encounter outsights2 to generate competitive and sustainable business advantages.

This pivot companies as we like to call them, generate those turning points that disrupt industries given the implementation of those truly innovative business models. Companies such as Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, Upwork, Paxata, Bounce Exchange, ZhongAn, Whealthfront, Vida (among many others) have discovered and leveraged on these insights and outsights that consolidated their business models to operate with avant-garde. They were able to predict the market trends, which allowed them to anticipate the needs and provide advanced solutions with impactful and innovative strategies and value propositions. Tactics such as collaborative economies, crowd sourcing, negative operating WK, analytics and prediction, brand new technology use, etc are the most recognizable ones, but furthermore these tactics aimed at creation of new industries by the integration of the existing ones. These pivot companies that are able to abstract their environment, understand it and reshaped it with world class value, don’t compete to be the best in the world, rather than to be the best for the world, as the Bcorporation, a non-profit organization dedicated to use the power of business as a force for good, states in its testimony.

Planning is Fundamental but Execution is an Imperative to Progress.

You definitely save in execution what you invest in planning, but execution is imperative to progress and risk management. Risk is overall, the number one resource that every executive entrepreneur has to learn to manage, the lean approach to problems and situations (related to lean startup, lean six sigma, lean manufacturing, lean six sigma) propounds strategies to create value minimizing risk and waste of resources. Now, the industries of the future can´t suffice on mere execution, they must effort to lean execute as an instrument of their innovation process in the trail to development. Complementary to the ideal of lean execution, always remember, if you are going to fail, fail quickly, cheap and iterate, but if you can avoid it, then don’t fail at all.

Correspondingly, as Kevin Dee CEO of the Canadian company Eagle, shares in his experienced view of business “when planning and running a business, make sure to focus on execution”. Furthermore, the industries of tomorrow must make sure to have a thorough understanding of their market, the strategy to take to action and special attention to details, as success or failure relies on details. At any rate, to invest in good people is to secure good execution and results, if you want to have the best company in the world you will also need the best people in your team, don’t comply with less. With respect to team communication, constant training and personal/professional rewards, always keep in mind that they are as important as a clear line of command, role and work specification and successes or failures accountability. Last but not least, have clear in your mind that hard work is not effective work, to be productive and efficient is to generate results by knowing what and how to do things the best; don’t work hard, work smart.

What are you doing today to make your company one of the industries that will lead tomorrow?

Its all up to you.

#MakeItHappen.

Juan Pablo Carrillo Estefan

Cofounder, Awaken Labs

#Innovation #entrepreneurship #English