I often go to network meetings and I am told that digitization is good at writing new rules. But which ones are they and how does that affect the strategy for new innovations in business models?
I’ve been wondering this for some time and have observed some startups as well as my current innovation projects that I oversee for customers. I’ve made some exciting discoveries.
Finding 1: Mass wins against class! With new business models it is generally important to win the market. Let’s look at delivery services like Lieferando, Foodora and co. as well as the e-scooters around Voi, Tier and Lime. The current providers are trying to conquer the market with an almost blatant force. Often the providers win with large corporations in the background or good investors. It often applies: Enter the market at a loss and persevere. Amazon also made a loss with books or Home24 with furniture for a long time until the market was really big enough.
Finding 2: Scaling in front of your own resources. I am often in large associations of service providers who implement such innovative projects. Hardly anything is done with our own resources. The reason is that you want to scale quickly. Rapid scaling leads to more flexibility and agility. Freelancers and interns can also be found at startups. This way, such a business can also be quickly dismantled.
Finding 3: Design over usability. Although usability has actually been on the rise in the last few years, “cool sayings” and “great logos” were able to prevail again. “Change Mobility for Good” (Tier) or “Don’t be evil” (Google) are in the minds of young people. This, in my opinion, is a consequence of the rapid scaling and growth. It is difficult to maintain a certain quality at such a speed. It should therefore be countered with marketing.
Conclusion
In this article I have refrained from expanding business models and limited myself to real disruptive innovations such as e-mobility or delivery services. I myself often work as a service provider in practice on such projects. These few statements simply represent my current opinion and they are certainly not complete.
I also have experience with such models as a founder. When we became the platform for business sales “ Projektify “, we also worked with numerous freelancers and interns. The platform is completely free to this day and it took us 2 years to get a meaningful market share. For us it meant: Grow quickly and persevere! We are now an association and volunteer to help founders.
Disruption is not easy and requires high speed and some cash reserves. You go to the market quickly and you have to assert yourself. Such a speed is possible especially through digital collaboration and the rapid development of technology. It will be exciting to see what disruption will hit the market next. One shows that innovation is not easy current study by Accenture , which has examined over 500 companies and puts forward two exciting theses that underline my opinion: Real digital disruption can currently only be achieved with a high investment of funds:
- The German
Top500 only show weak growth,
if it does not succeed, new potential with innovations
to tap into. - So far, digitization for
take advantage of significant sales growth.
