Start acting like it's tomorrow

© Valentina Curà – 123RF.com

Companies following the old ways to re-invent themselves or innovate their offerings are going to be out of business sooner that we all realise.

How quickly did Uber change our behaviour?

The rate of change is exponential and it is only set to increase with intensity. This, coupled with our need for instant gratification and quick response time, does not allow businesses to do consumer focus groups research or SWOT (I just fell asleep writing that) analysis. These consumers don't even know what they want and who said the competition knows what they are doing?

Drop all of it and just start studying trends and human needs states. Once you have the grasp of these, you can start predicting what your consumers want. Based on the needs states, which are mostly the same in developed worlds - more trust, more convenience and more personalisation - you can understand the future of your industry, your consumer and employees' requirements and start building your business on these three need states.

5 steps to become future-focused and let go of the past:

1. Study your industry in both mature and emerging markets and see what's happing there
2. Dissect the needs of your future consumer based on the needs states pillars
3. Dissect the needs of your future employee based on the needs states pillars (they applicable to both consumer and employee, cause they are both human)
4. Innovate your corporate culture first
5. Then add in product/service innovation

Ready, steady - stop doing old boring processes that don't actually help your business.