057: In Entrepreneurship there is no such thing as
“In entrepreneurship, there is no such thing as right or wrong. Only what works and what doesn’t work.” – Unknown
This was drawn by Apeng. Check out his awesome art blog here.
I cannot remember how I came across this quote, but it created a lasting impression on me. If anyone knows who made this quote please let me know. It could also have been “In business, there is no…”
This classic quote summarises the essence of doing business. Throughout the ages, businesses have been kept afloat by doing what actually works, not by doing what someone thinks is correct. Doing what works also means keeping up with the times and trends. Doing things ‘the way they’ve always been done’ will not work once the business practices in question become outdated.
So how do you tell is something works or not? By iterating, testing and pivoting. All the things taught in The Lean Startup.
That said, figuring out what the what works is probably just as hard as convincing company stakeholders to change business practices. That’s another challenge in of itself.
The inspiration for this comic is from the mp3 player wars in the early 2000’s, specifically Apple VS Creative. Not as popular as in USA, here in Eastern Asia, Creative was the leader in the mp3 player market. their products were superior in technology and audio quality. At the same time, Apple was starting to dominate with it’s first generation iPods. Creative made major business decisions, and went to wage ‘war’ in USA where Apple had the stronger foothold. Later on, Creative didn’t adapt it’s mp3 players or make them ‘cool’ like Apple’s. In the end, Apple’s iPod came to Asia and beat Creative as the market leader for mp3 players. It doesn’t matter whether the decisions made at Creative were wrong or right. Ultimately, the decisions didn’t work. Since then Creative has become a shadow it’s former self.
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