The key to solving this year's revenue crisis is to start working on the solution last year. If you wait until this year, you'll be playing catch up. Be proactive and identify where problems are likely to be hiding. If you can't do this, then look to see where the market is going and build product to meet those emerging needs.
Seems obvious but reality often gets in the way. How so?
The business environment is constantly changing - market saturates, competitors appear, margins are squeezed, regulatory situations change, et cetera.
We know this is going to happen in general, but not the specifics. So we plan in a certain amount of losses and move forward. This is as far as many companies go however.
Little is as frustrating to an innovation team as proposing a solution to an emerging market problem and management ignores the proposal for 2 1/2 years. And then wants a quick solution when the customers start asking for a solution. In fairness to management, not all emerging market problems actually emerge as problems. Worse, the best solution may not be what was proposed. There is very real risk associated solving next year's problems today. But its risk for which you can calculate the cost and book ahead of time. If you choose to delay until the solution is needed, you guarantee you will be 2nd to the market or worse.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft all solve tomorrow's revenue shortfalls by developing solutions to emerging market spaces. They don't do this because they are the big boys. This is how they became the big boys.
Originally published on LinkedIn.
