Business is often difficult because of market saturation--unless you propose a business idea that disrupts an industry.
When you develop or market a product that is in high demand because of the value it provides the consumer, then business is comparatively easier. Everything appears to go your way, from marketing to scaling up.
One thing that makes running a business challenging is the fierce competition. How do you differentiate your business from others selling the same or similar products or services? The way to flip the script is to come up with a unique business idea. It doesn’t have to be entirely new, just fresh enough to capture the public imagination.
How Business Ideas Are Born
So how do you develop the next big thing in business? First, be in the right industry. Then understand it well enough to assign a research team to develop a unique product or service.
A famous example is the story of the iPhone. Steve Jobs may have been brilliant, but he didn’t invent the prototype for the iPhone by himself in 2007. Instead, he knew enough about the problems occurring in the mobile phone industry to direct his hand-selected team of hardware and software engineers to develop a mobile web app and design that made all current mobile devices on the market look clunky.
So, before trying to come up with a brilliant business idea or organizing your own research team to come up with a stunning innovation that will create your fortune, you have to be part of a promising industry.
Two hot industries to consider this decade are genetics and The Internet of Things (IoT) Industry.
1. The Genetics Industry
There is a growing interest in genetic information for many reasons. One might be that it is getting cheaper to sequence the human genome. Another might be the emerging interest in personalized medicine for genetic-based diseases--because it’s proving to be an effective way to predict disorders, banish symptoms, or reverse rare diseases. According to Allied Market Research, the global market for genetic testing may grow by $1,607 million by 2025.
You could enter the genetics industry as a clinical geneticist, a molecular biologist, a biochemist, or some other medical specialty that would later empower you to launch your own practice, start a company, or build a laboratory.
If you don’t want to study medicine, but would still like to enter this industry, you could adopt a business role; for instance, you could become a medical device sales rep, a position that offers a high level of pay, job security, and job growth. You’ll be selling breakthrough medical technologies. For example, you might get hired to sell a groundbreaking device like the flow cytometry machine, which is a laser-based microfluidic cell sorting machine that can detect microbial or mammalian cells.
2. The Internet of Things (IoT) Industry
The Internet of Things is an industry that enhances the performance of other industries. It’s a technological movement that disrupts any industry that uses it. It’s changing the automotive industry and it’s creating a technologically driven agricultural revolution. One industry that it’s poised to disrupt is the leviathan oil and gas industry. When this industry leverages IoT, it’s economic impact might hover around $930 billion in the next decade.
So how do you position yourself within the IoT industry? There is no direct path. Instead, you have to get an education in programming, networking, big data, or embedded systems. Once you’ve acquired knowledge and experience in one or more of these disciplines, particularly in programming or embedded systems, you’ll be able to grow a career in IoT or launch a business.
In conclusion, once you’ve found your big, bold, business idea, your primary job is not to figure out how to get more market share, but how to streamline all your business processes to cope with high consumer demand. You won’t have to spend much time figuring out how to interest people in what you have to sell, instead you’ll be preoccupied with the logistics of supply and demand.
