Nothing Traditional

During a discussion in a board meeting, a member of the trust in a curious stance asked a senior, who owned a reputed business, what’s the catch in the success of your business especially when the market is in bitter turmoil. The senior smiled and answered – Nothing Traditional.

Being associated with an SME, it seemed like a guiding rule. Innovation offers juice but simply until the time the competition shares market segment; and by that time the innovator has already moved to another idea. The market expands/plays and squeezes the potential to the last drop till the fight of the supply chain ends with minimal margins. Those who rule are the ones who are unique, innovative and proactive – they win, excel and enthrall.

Companies in Covid times moved to online mediums and the bricks and mortar businesses compromised. Covid is playing games differently in various parts of the world and the term traditional is almost obscure. When many people say that they are doing a certain things just because they have been doing so since long--it is now not a logically accepted reason. Lets admit it, there remains no tradition in these new times.

Our 21” screen which the family would sit around at dinner has been replaced by seven individual 5” handy sets – so the need is to have a competent router to support these gadgets than to have a lead to run the central display. All seven in the family travel alone in their vehicles, be it a rented Uber/Bykea or personal transport – though tradition forces them to save fuel and travel together. It’s all about measuring the pros and cons but all that matters is time and efficiency.

Technology is in its ultimate excitement mode; decisions are taken in Zoom meetings and the airline tickets see movement from business cities to luxury resorts. One feels comfortable avoiding in person contact and winning big orders – reducing costs which should have been avoided since ages; but were inevitable.

With the Web moving to 3.0; concepts are about to move from central to distributed. We moved from intranets to internet and now again are planning to have our small trusted economies with confirmed transactions. So trust is dominating the other aspects of measuring success. One who takes it up faster gets FIFO benefits.

Being part of the design industry has always helped us stay abreast of learning the changing tastes of the consumers. Nothing traditional works here too. The mobile first design framework leads as traffic shows 98% mobile hits. What may rule tomorrow always remains in testing mode. You need to experiment every day and what clicks results in conversions.

Coming back, Nontraditional and non-conventional stories lead the headlines and who will rule tomorrow is someone who brings the electric cars idea in a world run by the oil economy – or the one who brought apple when all was desk-topped. Alibaba has to sing a new song of sales every day and Amazon introduces new features to remain on the top. Daraz shoots and shouts for 11-11, 12-12 with new offers and excitements while Lazada, eBay and Etsy plans to have big times by the end of year.

?Let’s change how we think and how we do business, let’s adopt the likes of the Gen Z and the Millennials as they are deciding, and will decide, what to spend today and tomorrow.