predictability, my friend is a bigger virtue than patience.
no one is, was and ever will be in the same space-time coordinates as you are now, so the same rules, tips and tricks which work for you now may not work for others or even for you at another time(or even vice versa).
every disease has its cure, and you cant swap ones medicine for the other.
the same logic applies to both life and business, what might ‘totally rock’ today might be dull and drab tomorrow.
the 1980s saw the sony walkman coming into the music market, it was the right time and the right attempt, it ‘totally rocked’.
the ipod came somewhere around 2001, once again they hit the right shot at the right time, business bloomed.
then came the zune player(did you hear about it ), bad timing, bad hitting.
the thing about the market is you have to give them what they want, no matter how meaningless or foolish it is. and often the market only asks for a ’sequel’ to what already existed. the desktop market asked for laptops, the laptop market asked for better laptops and so on so forth. the task of the company is to give them that. plain and simple(so, it may seem! )
people will always want more and better stuff(human nature, my friend , human nature) , its the job of the company to give them that and when you cant meet up their expectations, you are simply wiped out unless there is nothing in the market which is as good as yours. perhaps one big reason why zune didn’t work is because people had already seen the ipod. perhaps one big reason why windows works is people haven’t yet seen a mac.
this can best be explained by the automobile market, all cars have four wheels and a steering, until you see a better car, you are going to be very happy with your old one, the moment you see a better one, you are going to want it.
say you didn’t know about ice creams, then you wouldn’t have bothered about them, but now that you know what an ice cream tastes like, you are going to want it.
‘wants’ might be said are subject to viewability. (business is more to be ‘want based’ than ‘need based’).
your product should shout at the customer: ” dude, this is what you have been looking for all your life”.
the challenge here is to rightly anticipate what people want and i tell you this is not at all easy, there will always be error, the trick is to minimize the error. six sigma helps here, but you know, being humans, you can never predict anything to an entirety, how much ever you try, there will still be loads more that could have been done.
beauty, my friend is when you look a little less uglier.
