Small Businesses Are the Drivers of Innovation
On a traditional and maybe not so even playing field, small businesses are not capable of competing with larger, more established industrial players. They do not possess the resources to take the same kind of large-scale actions – bulk purchases, to give a simple example. This is why they are on the losing end of any competition that requires scaling, such as a price war.Amazon.com is a good example. Look at the way that they manage to undercut traditional bookstores. This is due to their ability to survive on thinner profit margins and optimise their activities, from their shipping processes to the ways that they hold stock at their warehouses, economy of scale as such.However, if we think back to the beginning, Amazon started small (more specifically, one-man-in-his-garage small), which is pretty small by anyone’s standards. How do such companies manage to grow, and how can the small businesses of today’s world hope to emulate their success? I’ve been thinking about this recently and I’ve come to some surprising conclusions.It is my assertion that being a small business enables the innovative approaches that create game-changing economic juggernauts. On the other hand, the realities of being an economic juggernaut make the same type of innovation much less likely.This is why small businesses are the true drivers of innovation. It’s impossible to compete in a traditional manner, so the only way to win is to change the game.Unlike small businesses, large companies favour orderly changes that are easily contained in an existing industrial or corporatized context. They like controlled processes, where their tight structures and access to resources put them at an advantage. Any hierarchical organisation has the same attitude.Even if there is a mass adoption of new modes of problem solving, this is usually followed by attempts at acquisition on the part of a larger organisation. Look at the history of any large technology company – after a certain point they stop developing new products and begin buying start-ups and once again fast tracking their path to new and more innovating technology, all to stay ahead of the pack.Even when a company is not the creator of a certain type of disruption, many arise to occupy the new ecosystem that it generates. There would be no search engine optimisation industry without search engines, after all. In the rise and fall of these niches, it is the least established organisations that benefit from them.Why Small Businesses Can Create DisruptionWe know why industrial disruptions benefit small businesses, but why are they the ones that are uniquely capable of creating them? There are several reasons for this.Disruptive innovation is a mass-level, non-institutional change. At its core, it threatens the status quo and is usually born out of small, non-hierarchical groupings. Structural change and disruption take place in large, traumatic upheavals, which uniquely benefit small, loosely-organised groups.In smaller organisations, where each person is more likely to wear multiple hats, specialisation is practically non-existent due to the need of being the jack of all trades. This leads to a greater flexibility and willingness to change fundamental approaches. A specialised method of solving problems is a recipe for orthodoxy and thinking that any deviation from the norm is impractical.For exactly the same reasons that larger organisations are better at solving problems at a large scale, they are worse at recognising necessary deviations from the norm. Compartmentalised, specialised processes stifle novelty and creativity, keeping them less nimble while being necessary for mass support and service.Furthermore, the ties between those who run small businesses are most often not economic, but predicated on other social ties. Small businesses, including start-ups, are often formed among friends and family, rather than among a group of specialists in a particular field. This allows them to harness the self-motivating forces of loyalty and genuine ownership of the product, giving them that extra drive to overcome any potential hurdles.There are large companies that have attempted to create these types of structures within a larger corporate environment, but their successes are the exception rather than the rule. They become unwieldy and difficult to control from the centre. Industrial hierarchy makes it possible to take less trained workers and get more uniform results from them. Anyone who’s ever had a fast food job can attest to this.Small businesses, when faced with an unusual problem (and when you’re developing the next big thing in your garage, there’s no such thing as a usual problem) tend to find unusual solutions to it. In larger organisations, each possible new solution has to be passed up the corporate ladder, being distorted and or diluted each time it’s passed up or down the chain. This delays and usually weakens any adoption of new ideas. Furthermore, the employees in large organisations often resist new methods of their own accord, preferring habitual but non-optimal solutions.Mass adoption of new methods of socialising, doing work, or making money are never the results of the types of calculation that are common in the boardroom. Because the motives are so inarticulate and arise spontaneously from wildly varying sectors of society, this process cannot be manipulated, predicted, or controlled with any degree of exactitude.These changes also lead to the emergence of changed landscapes where the services developed by the establishment may not be relevant. Take the example of the recording industry. The CD manufacturing, distribution, and promotion infrastructure were devalued when digital downloads disrupted the industry. Their reluctance to accept it is understandable.If you already have an established business model that brings in revenue, it is usually foolish to abandon it. Even expanding your core services takes a great deal of resources and vision, and the largest, most profitable companies have made themselves that way by introducing disruption within the circumstances where they do their business.This can be accomplished, but the fundamental tendencies of each type of organisation remains the same – small organisations tend to be more agile and to seek unorthodox, innovative answers, while larger ones tend toward standard solutions to standardised problems.So there you have my view on how small businesses continue to be the drivers of innovation. As every professional was once an amateur and every expert was once a beginner and every successful company was once a small start-up.
Home Base Business Idea
Full time Vs Part timeVarious people treat home based business ideas in different ways. Though some people like to run with a home based business idea as a full time business, others like to take up a home based business idea as a part time activity only – maybe just to test it first. However, each approach has its own pros and cons.Home based business idea – Part timeThe first option is to start with your home based business idea as a part time job. A number of entrepreneurs take this approach. This approach helps you in mitigating the risk that is generally associated with starting a new business. In case your home based business idea fails, you at least have your job intact. Once you have your home based business idea doing well, you can take it up as a full time business. The main problem with operating a home based business idea as a part time business is maintaining the balance between your part time home based business idea and your full time job. If you don’t plan really well, you might end up messing up with both (which is the last thing you would want). Also, running your home based business idea in spare time will mean that you don’t have any time for your family and friends. Moreover, maintaining the focus on two things (your full time job and your home based business idea) is not an easy job. Also, the growth of your home based business idea will be much slower than what it could be if you were running it as a full time business.Home based business idea – Full timeIf you plan to take the plunge straight away, you might leave your full time job and start dedicatedly with your home based business idea. However, in such a case you need to be sure of the success of your home based business idea. You should have vetted your home based business idea enough so as to give you the confidence of going all out. Even then, you must have a back up plan just in case the home based business idea doesn’t deliver as per your expectations. Also, do not put in all your savings into your home based business idea, put aside some amount to cover your living expenses too. However, running your home based business idea as a full time job will help you in maintaining a better balance between work and family (as compared to operating your home based business idea as a part time activity). Also, with more time on hand, you would be able to plan and implement better and hence see your business grow even faster.
Your Online Success Depends On Selecting The Right SEO Firm – Remember That!
More than ever before, the need for selecting an amicable and trusted SEO Firm has become immense now. The competition in every field of online marketing has become tougher – thanks to the mushroom growth of websites, crossing one billion already. In this rat-race, how your website can bring forth desired results, unless it is popularized by ethical, meaningful and technology-upgraded Search Engine Optimization efforts?Talking of SEO techniques and tactics, you must understand that these are frequently changing phenomena. In line with the Algorithm Updates (priority of picking and projecting websites by Search Engine crawlers) the SEO tactics have changed vastly, over the recent years. More clearly, the SEO strategies adopted even by a Top SEO Company, believed to be effective till recently have lost their charm – like stuffing of keywords inside the web-content, mindlessly without context.With this changed scenario obtaining, to follow proven and successful SEO strategies that can guarantee top-ranking by popular Search Engine Page Results, you have to be even more careful in entrusting the website promotion project, only to professional SEO Specialists.How to choose the Top SEO Company? Here are important tips:1. Define your SEO requirements clearly:The objective of every website floated online is to meet with success – either highest profit or growth for online businesses or immense popularity for service-oriented sites. This is achieved only according to the aspirations of the site owners. For example, as the owner, you may need to achieve reasonable increase in volume of business in the next 3 months – this may be quantified in percentage. Some other website owner can desire differently and in different volume.If only you are determined of the target in your mind thus, prior to allotting the SEO task to the SEO Services Company, you can measure the success rate after end of this period, once the SEO Services Company finishes its SEO efforts.2. Get a Comprehensive Service provider for SEO: As mentioned earlier, SEO Services of today have become complex. Search Engines stipulate stiffer conditions for ranking a site at the top, as a measure of eliminating substandard sites and preventing them from getting the top-ranks, by illicit methods. The SEO Company you select should be the one that can render comprehensive services, relating to SEO from “A” to “Z”.For example, a result-oriented SEO Company, that has credible track records in SEO tactics should start with complete analysis of your website, including web design, to find out where it stands Search Engine ranking-wise, and suggest to you fruitful corrective methods.In addition, today’s SEO firms are to run that extra-mile, in not only bringing forth huge visitor-traffic to your site, but also prune your website’s content suitably. This pruning will help to provide happy consumer-experience, to convert visitors into buyers, then loyal customers and later on canvassing agents by the usefulness of your website, to their friends.3. Keep your search wider:It is your website that is going to suffer by selecting a so-so SEO firm. Therefore, you have every liberty to widen your dragnet and take free-consultation offered by multiple SEO Companies, to come to an informed decision. Gathering as much details as possible with regard to their services, capabilities, track-records and of course the cost involved will put you in a better standing, in implementing your choice.Check the credentials of the Top SEO Company carefully given from websites of your size, field and industry. If those sites have been promoted into prominence by the SEO Company in question, you can be sure that the SEO Company has the required capabilities to promote your site also very well.4. See only the merit and not size:It is not necessary that the so-called big names of SEO companies can only deliver results. Irrespective of the size, the professionalism of the SEO specialists is all that is going to achieve your objective. So be smart and select your right SEO Company (which must invariably be the Top SEO Company) that can work according to your wishes, aspirations and budget, to be a happy winner of online success.