When I ask people to name a franchise, they always list restaurant concepts or other consumer-facing businesses. I often use this to pound home the message that business to consumer (B2C) franchises are only a small fraction of franchises, and the vast majority are in fact business to business (B2B) concepts.
The same type of misinformation is true when I ask what it takes to start a new business. Nearly everyone says you have to be innovative and have a unique product idea to be successful. They believe that you have to be the first mover to succeed in a new industry. To these people, I say, “You are just flat out wrong!”
It is not the new and novel idea that makes a successful business – it’s the execution.
It is not the new and novel idea that makes a successful business – it’s the execution. Everyone would like to build the next Google, but Google was not the first search engine. Before Google, I used Alta Vista. Facebook was not the first social networking site. Before Facebook, I had a MySpace account. What made these companies successful was that they didn’t have to expend resources to educate the masses about the industry. Instead, they focused their energy on their execution to leap-frog the competition. They simply looked for ways of doing things a little bit better than the rest of the competition.
Do you focus your energies on being more innovative, or on ways to be better at execution, so you can leap-frog your competition?
