Posted on : 2024-03-29 04:28:00
Article : Good evening Friday management TASK 287- Think like a start-up- scale like an enterprise, balancing the best of both.
Growth is what business is all about. ‘Small’ and then ‘middle’ are meant to be stages on the road to ‘big’. Imagine if our tiny brands were all content to remain that way of “no growth please”, we’re happy. The country’s economic situation would be even more dire than it is. Start-ups may be nimble and free to take risks, but that’s because they have to be. There are far more benefits to having the resources of a big brand Big is beautiful: Think like a mass marketer, not a start-up.
The average marketer is every bit as perverse as the next person. Given the brand assets and challenges they happen to have, they want the ones they don’t have. They yearn to be in the opposite position from where they are right now. The marketer of a small, niche brand will covet the scale, swagger, budgets and sheer presence of the market leader. What must it be like to have that kind of muscle, to have pockets that deep, to be able to fund big ideas, not just come up with them? While envy is never pretty, at least in this direction it makes a kind of sense, since it mirrors the trajectory that underlies all commercial endeavour.
You can’t fake entrepreneurial spirit- The other way around, though, where the big envy the small, makes no sense whatsoever. Yet it is common. Marketers of mainstream brands look with craving at the speed and flexibility of the minnows. They go green-eyed at the way niche brands can be all pointy and polarising, with less of the need to worry about alienating people. And mass marketers will often find themselves traversing a market share plateau, where every unit of gain is hard won. How much more thrilling it must be to be riding a bucking upstart, a cheeky challenger, where doubling brand share in a matter of months is by no means out of the question.
It doesn’t help that this is a reverie many chief executives are happy to indulge. Noting what they perceive to be a creeping paralysis in their marketers, they challenge them to ‘be entrepreneurial’ and to ‘think like a start-up’. This makes as much sense as asking the occupants of a mansion to imagine that they live in a tent. It can’t be done, because the everyday reality will scream the opposite. The reason entrepreneurs think creatively, take risks and act fast is down to what they are unmistakably feeling: the icy draught of running down the cash.
Remember to always believe in yourself and your vision, be passionate about your business, be prepared to work hard, and be willing to take risks. If you keep these things in mind, you'll be well on your way to start-up success. Despite the intrinsic differences between start-ups and enterprises, one thing is certain: The pace of change in today’s market is so fast and volatile that companies of all sizes risk their survival unless they become more disruptive and innovative. While there is no silver bullet to success, your organization can learn from both start-ups and large enterprises. You can take the agility of a start-up and combine that with the organizational attributes of larger enterprises to help build your company.
With this preamble on how start-ups should think to grow bigger as organisations, we request the readers of this TASK blog to post your perceptive thoughts or observations or career experiences to offer more useful inputs to the readers. Our Management solution with few real time organisations examples will be posted on our Good morning Monday Management solution to TASK 287 will be posted on 31st March 2024.
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