We live in very interesting times when new business realities and approaches have come into existence! Our business models have changed, along with our ways of doing and manipulate things. But the most interesting thing is, that along our way of doing day-to-day business, a new substratum it seems to emerge. A one signifies the development of a new business environment, in which, all us, would be summoned to work with!
A New Business Horizon
The main feature of this new business reality concerns the information products and structures we design, form and develop. And that not for large companies only. The same principle concerns, small businesses, even and individuals, active in the area of digital or analog product development.
Technology and the new business, economic, social and market environment, transform us from just consumers to consumers and producers at the same time.
Therefore, the way we were doing business is changing radically (and is expected to change some more following our differentiated consumer needs, habits and demands!). To what end, yet not be known. But the stage is changing rapidly, providing opportunities, capabilities, and platforms for new business ideas, enterprises, products, and services, unseen in earlier eras. New actors and agents come forth while others trying to leave gracefully the lights of publicity, having as the main concern only one aim: “not to lose face“.
Changes? Where? What The New Business Environment Signifies?
The “winds of change” signify changes and transformations in various personal and business levels.
- At the barriers between personal and professional life.
- At the decisions, signify a shift from traditional jobs/occupations to new work models and the personal adaptations these mirrors.
- At the new strategies and tactics to be adopted for adjusting to the new cultural and business environment.
- At the capabilities, an individual have today for doing his/her job and at the multiplication of skills, attitudes, knowledge and business profiles found in individuals
- At the emerge of new roles for carrying out business processes and functions with innovative ways and models, striving to smaller profit margins and higher social, sharing, knowledge and community impact.
- At the embarrassing of a culture of change and permanent beta based personal career path
- At the multiplication of the new business models, aiming at the inauguration of various startup companies.
- At the acceleration of the topple rate, (ratio of speed at which firms lose their leadership positions) causing the existing companies to lose their lead status in the market  and replaced by others
- At the modes, new startup companies evolved and developed, mirroring innovative and creative business models implemented in a fraction of time and resources, against the traditional ones.
- At the rise of new forms of leadership (as the Thought Leadership is, for instance), entrepreneurship, marketing (as the viral marketing is) and modeling of business practices
- At the many new financing opportunities and resources, available to everybody (like the Kickstarter projects for instance or AngelList)
- At the multiplication of virtual structures for carried out traditional companies’ function (like virtual assistance, outsourcing, new collaboration and communication tools & platforms for bringing together virtual resources, etc.)
Do we reach a Strategic Infection Point or Not?
It seems, that we truly experiencing a strategic inflection point, accompanied by the advance of many and diversified disruptive technologies.
It seems that today, as Andrew S. Grove so eloquent express it, we are witnessing:
what happens to a business when a major change takes place in its competitive environment. A major change due to introduction of new technologies. A major change due to the introduction of a different regulatory environment. The major change can be simply a change in the customers’ values, a change in what customers prefer. Almost always it hits the corporation in such a way that those of us in senior management are among the last ones to notice. I’m paraphrasing the words you used in some of your talk, Peter. But what is common to all of them and what is key is that they require a fundamental change in business strategy, and that’s almost a definition of a Strategic Inflection Point. A Strategic Inflection Point is that which causes you to make a fundamental change in business strategy. Nothing less is sufficient (From Andrew S. Grove’s speech in 1998 at the AcadÂemy of ManÂageÂment meetÂing in San Diego).
Therefore it depends on us, how to exploit these new trends. We would do something that would change ourselves and the world around us or we would be simple bystanders in the course of the new waves, which approach? We have to decide. Soon!
Do you think that you can exploit the new business environment or not? Are you ready to invest in yourself for transforming yourself and the way you do things or not? Do you think that the new business approach would benefit our society or not?Â
