Entrepreneurship is defined as “the capacity and willingness to develop, organize, and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit” (Business Dictionary). Technically, performing those tasks within an existing company is referred to as “intrapreneurship“. However, for the sake of this article, we’ll use the two terms interchangeably.
If you own or manage a business, the bottom line is this: we all want growth. Entrepreneurship provides an excellent means of building your company. In this article, we’ll look at two ways that entrepreneurial spirit can grow your organization
Developing your own niche:
This is the riskiest method of entrepreneurship. There is no precedent for what you’re attempting to release, and there’s also no guarantee anyone will want it. You may end up eating the cost of developing that multimillion dollar piece of software, or gadget, or whatever niche industry in which you are competing.
However, it also has the most potential for initial profit as you have no competitors. If you’re really on the cutting edge, your competitors (if you have any!) may not even have a similar product under development, meaning you have the entire market to yourself. A complete lack of competition and a high-demand, innovative product – well, that’s a goldmine.
With the right idea, careful research, and well-executed development, you can completely revolutionize entire industries (or even the world!). But here’s a word of warning: if your product is successful, you’ll eventually have competitors. Innovate, innovate, innovate, and stay ahead of the curve! You’re being hunted.
Entering a new niche:
Believe it or not, Apple didn’t always make iPods, iPhones, and iPads. At one point, they were just a highly-successful computer company. Their foray into the handheld devices market really took off with the development of the iPod in October of 2001. While it may be the most famous MP3 player, it was not the first.
In 1998, a South Korean company, Saehan Information Systems, released the MPMan. The device allowed users to store a whopping 32MB of data (enough for a handful of songs). It wasn’t much, but it was revolutionary (see #1: Developing your own niche).
Not long after, the Diamond Rio came to market and had moderate success. The Rio included a larger display and a Smart Media slot, thereby allowing users to purchase larger memory cards and store more songs (up to 64MB!). It marked an improvement over the MPMan and sold several hundred thousand units.
The MP3 player market really took off when Apple released the iPod, thus proving that it’s not necessarily the first one in that controls the market. The iPod, amongst other features, offered 5 and 10GB models. They achieved equally-astonishing levels of success with the iPhone (2007) and iPad (2010), which were also late-comers to the party, by providing a significant upgrade over existing technologies.
In short, if you’re going to enter a market late, produce a top-notch product. Your best chance at beating well-established competitors is to create a product which outperforms theirs (and then market it well!), as we saw with the MPMan vs. Rio, and then again with the Rio vs. iPod. Even if you aren’t reinventing the wheel, you need to produce a better-rolling wheel than your competitors.
If you’re confused about some aspect of entrepreneurship, let us know! We help ambitious entrepreneurial companies make the transition to hyper growth companies. Visit our webpage and view our process and our services. We hope to hear from you soon!