There's no question of what comes of businesses that fail to look for opportunities and innovate.
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Whether you are the owner of local cafe or an international tech company, the imperative to continually and accurately address the needs of your customers has never been greater. Despite established businesses having the upper hand over start-ups when it comes to industry and customer insights, many defer to the habit of maintaining the status quo rather than using these insights to drive an even better value proposition than before.
The question remains, do you want to be the disruptor or be disrupted? Business owners and their employees see patterns and opportunities to innovate all the time, but the difficulty is shaking off the mentality of "business as usual". Innovation is hard mostly because it involves taking a series of ideas and not really knowing which ones will be the winners that gain traction with customers.
However, there are two strategies to overcome the uncertainty of innovation.
The first is to acquire evidence to prove that an idea is worth pursuing. Established companies have an advantage here because they have inroads to people who are, or have the potential to be, customers. Simply having a conversation with these leads will provide huge insights that help determine if an idea is relevant to a customer's needs. The second strategy is to practice making "small bets".
Of the ideas that stand out strongest from your conversations with customers, what's the bare minimum that could be implemented to test if the idea has legs?
Then, keep tweaking until your idea resonates so strongly with customers you don't need to be the one asking questions - they are telling you how much better their days is because of your idea. Start small and big things will follow.