Foundation Elements of Modern Businesses
August 17, 2010 in Business Development
Seth Godin is an amazing thinker. In a recent post he outlines some of the foundation elements for modern businesses.
When you sit down to dream up a new business, you can imagine a world without constraints. Or you can choose to build in fundamental pieces that will make it more likely your idea will pay off.
Here are some fundamental pieces of most new successful businesses. The goal is to build these elements into the very nature of the business itself, not just to tack them on. For example, the Scotch tape people at 3M can’t do #5, because of the structure of retail distribution and the way they mass produce and can’t track who is buying what.
You can live without some of these, but go in with your eyes open if you do:
1. Build in virality. Consider: Groupon.
2. Don’t sell a product that can be purchased cheaper at Amazon.
3. Subscriptions beat one-off sales.
4. Try to create an environment where your customers are happier when there are other customers doing business with you (see #1).
5. Treat different customers differently.
6. Generate joy, don’t just satisfy a need for a commodity.
7. Rely on unique individuals, not an easily copyable system.
8. Plan on remarkable experiences, not remarkable ads.
Read the whole thing here (Foundation elements for modern businesses.)
How can you treat your customers differently from what your competition does? I think that building “remarkable” into the experience is a very important part. What do you think? Leave a Comment.
