Downtown L.A's Business Blog

Evolution of products used to be long-tail: Six years from design, manufacturing, and sales.  That’s changed: radically. Product development can be done anywhere: R+D can be done anywhere. So-so design can be done in many places and that means products  evolve and get better faster ergo-shorter, tighter life cycles.

The market place demands more-expects more-and gets more. Prices fall and rise based on commodities and the changing policies of governments, the willingness of private money and institutions to invest, and policy: All those factors are variable.

This means almost anything-anything, can be commoditized: Businesses are no longer applauded just for having a well-made product and sales teams don’t just win on ‘product knowledge’ alone.

What’s left? What can’t be dragged down into the morass of commodification and what questions should you ask about yourself and your company?

1. Personality: Do you have an attractive personality- are you a magnet? Is this reflected, infused, in your brand and company? Are you able to connect people with other people? Do people call you. Do people ask youto assist them, solve problems, and get things done? Is all this integrated into your companies’ brand and image. Personality decreases the disaster of commodification. Can your personality, difuse through your organization, renown, encourage consumers to purchase your products just past the conventional widom of when the product’s life-cycle is supposed to be over? Do you believe  you can remake your personality? You can: Mirror and study attractive personalities.
2. Ideas: Do you have great out-of-the-box ideas: Are they so compelling and powerful that they drive alliances and bring people together to assist you with your dream-make that dream their own, and, in partnership make real, what is your vision? Do you have many good ideas? Do you write them down? Do you share them with others-bringing them closer to you? Can your ideas singularly improve enough peoples’ lives and businesses that what you sell, and the company you own  turn the commodification tide and extend your product’s life-cycle?
3. Emotions: Do you care? Stop for a moment: Ponder this- Do you care? Do you empathize? Are you able to emote powerfully positive energy that compells others to join with you in bold visions-are you emotionally in tune with others? Do they feel better when you are around: Energized, cheered-up, grateful for the time they spend with you? Bottom-line: Do they feel inspired. No force, no cheaper, faster, better manufacturer or company can compete with a leader who can inspire his/her team under any conditions, threats, foes, or situations. The power to inspire= the power to strike down the tidal-force of copy-catism. Inspiration is the ultimate brand and as rare as the rarest diamond.
4. Strategy: Do you drive your choices in business strategically? Do you map your business out? Goal post, do you put yourself in another man’s shoes and try to bring enough good to the table that conventional deals, contracts, and ways of doing things-which led to this recession-which led to this recession-can be undone through force of out-of-the-box ‘win-win’ strategic planning?
5. Excellent Design: And here is the shield and sword of a companies’ ability to go to war with mass-volume-hydra headed, far flung purveyors of rapidlly produced product: Exquisite design. Do you have on your team or in your universe players able to up-brand and extend the life cycle of your companies’ products with innovative, trans formative designs-over and over again?
6. CONNECTIVITY: Can you bring people together when you have very few resources and execute the goal? No man is an island-none of us are perfect. CONNECTIVITY is not “making connections”-that was pre-recession babble- CONNECTIVITY is the combination of 1-3 above: Personality, ideas, and emotions. CONNECTIVITY IS YOUR (AND YOUR COMPANIES’) WARRIOR-It can’t be beat. And maybe only one in 100,000 people have the power of CONNECTIVITY. Seek them out-and stay stuck to them like epoxy.