The general theme of this book is that when you are starting a new company it is smarter to focus on a small niche with little competition and then as your company gets more successful you can start providing a wider selection of products or services. Too many times people try to provide too much when they first start out or focus on the most popular products and this causes new companies to lose money. Find your niche and become an expert on that, even if your customer base is not very large.
This book connected a lot with this class because it talks about smart strategies for starting a new business and finding the right market to target. We took a lot of time learning about segments in this class and this book teaches you how to find the right segment.
If I were to design a class assignment based on this book I would ask the students to figure out what they are the best at. Something they are really good at that most others are not. Then I would tell them to think of a company idea that can exploit that unique talent or interest even if they initially do not think a lot of customers will be interested in this. It is better to be the best at something for a small market than similar to everyone else in a large market.
My biggest 'aha' moment came when the author was describing how Netflix started out. This illustrated his idea very well, saying that Netflix took movies that did not do too well in the box office and offered them via DVD. There was demand for the high majority of his movies and Netflix became popular. There is a niche for each movie and just because it was not a big hit in theaters, does not mean there is not a market out there that will spend money on it. The big takeaway is that as your company grows, it might be a good idea to focus on less popular markets and be the only one selling than to sell popular items but have a lot of competition.
Hey Eric! It was nice hearing about a new potential read. You explained it in very simple terms and made me want to pick it up from the book store. I am interested in the class assignment. Personally, I do not know what my "special talent" would be but I like the idea of targeting a small niche of people.
ReplyDeleteHI Eric,
ReplyDeleteWow this book seemed amazing and probably would have been very beneficial for me regarding my business, I wish I would have read this one. However, the assignment you would have students do is interesting. I think as humans we focus on what we are not good at, to the point where we forget what we are good at. So it is interesting that you would have them think about something they are good at and more likely to execute as a business plan.