How to make businesses grow and prosper
Why is it that the media and politicians always emphasize the importance of growth and development in private sector, and yet cry out loud whenever a business goes down – claiming that it should be obvious to anyone that such an idea or such a concept couldn’t possibly be commercially viable.
What is a good idea in the first place?
Being brought up in a small farming community in Western Norway certain values have been imposed on me. Everything should be for a reason and and everything should be reasonably priced. These are the basic consumer laws where I come from. This corresponds well with the laws of nature saying that everything is moving towards an equilibrium.
If I – a mediocre cook – told people that I was going to start a restaurant selling thin, dry hamburgers with a greasy salad and fried potatoes, they would laugh at me and persuade me to abandon the whole idea – simply beacuse the food wouldn’t be good. Nobody can run a restaurant without the food being good. Or can they?
McDonalds have succeeded in this respect. They prepare poor food, and yet they are swarmed with people who want to buy it. Why is this? It is because McDonalds, and many others witht them, have redefined the values associated with a meal: it is no longer to eat food that tastes good – it is to eat food (that is) fast. This idea represents a major shift in the principles of business development.
In the childhood of industrialization a typical starting point for developing a business was to identify a need which was not already catered for in a specific region. Having done this, the next step was to create the answer to this need in the form of a physical product. Currently it seems business development is a question of already having a product, subsequently manufacturing a need for it.
[ (Stein) Runar Bergheim, 6 . 2.Sat, ]