What valuable company is nobody building and How to think outside the Box?

“One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out of it” – Jeff Bezos

Leveraging emerging technologies like IoT, Big Data and analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain and machine learning, the Indian Startup ecosystem boasts around 2000 to 2500 promising tech start-ups. But how do aspiring entrepreneurs think outside the box? Are all the breakthrough innovations already executed? Is there an untapped market going unnoticed that’d grow into a billion dollar company?

“Think outside the box.”

This phrase is quite familiar but its meaning is likely to have lost something of its edge and appeal. Usually, this phrase is used to encourage someone to create a solution or solve a problem by thinking differently.

While managing several projects in high school and college I tried to do everything by the book. I was spending more time in updating powerpoints, directing team members and correcting them rather than delivering. I wanted my team members to work exactly the same way as I would have done tasks. This philosophy did not work, we ended up with low project scores, low team spirit and dissatisfied with our own performance. I needed to bring about a radical shift in this mindset. Books like ‘7 Habits of highly effective people’, ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, and ‘How to win friends and influence people’ - really helped to unearth the misconceptions about teamwork and transcend independent thinking by unleashing interdependent power.

So the next time I led a team, I took a piece of paper and wrote few bullet points and keywords on it. I gave that paper to my teammate who is an artist, and I asked her to be creative and make a one-page awareness flyer. She did an amazing work; She had a lot of pleasure working on this document, and I would never had created a document like that without her innovative approach. Our entire team worked in synergy leading to high scores, boosting team spirit and creative thinking.

Lessons learnt: Allow room for continuous learning, involve the entire team, give your team autonomy, be open about what ‘leadership’ looks like, seek first to understand and then to be understood, believe in synergy.

What Is The Box?

The "Box" is the accumulation of your past experiences – good, bad or neutral, lessons learnt from success and failures. Where do new thoughts come from? They conceive from various "seeds." They may come from what you see or hear. The box can bring comfort acquired from knowing what we know. The box can provide protection from not knowing what we don't know. Conventional wisdom is locked up in the box, nice and securely. We might be in the box when we assume all good ideas have already been surfaced.

How to Think Out of the Box?

Thinking out of "the box" of your own prior experiences means collecting ideas from other people's experiences. That can be done by :

1) Exchanging ideas and engaging in thought provoking conversations with new people in your circle of influence, business clients, friends and family, mentors, teachers etc.

2) New ideas come from reading, attending seminars, workshops, keynotes and networking.

3) Once you surround yourself with opinions other than your own, new ideas will begin to emerge.

4) Intend to encounter, rather than 'come up with' ideas. Take up courses to enhance skills revolving around your passion.

5) Try writing articles, essays, poems, filming content - audio/video, on topics in an unfamiliar genre and ask your audience for suggestions, advice, reviews.

These are the seeds I was referring to. The synergy will cause the great idea to emerge. Be ready at that time when a new idea surfaces unexpectedly. No matter how strong the temptation, do not ignore it, regardless how simple or extravagant it may seem. On the contrary, preserve it, document it and refer to it to help you to get out of the box. Do not be gobsmacked by how simple it seems to be. Sometimes it is the simplest solutions may often yield the most incredible results.

Let’s have a look at 2 of my favorite business models that are innovating out of the box and making it big:

Players that tapped the team collaboration space

The 99% untapped market gap until late 2014 was the “team collaboration platform” within an organization structure. There was a need to create better substitute for time consuming mails, accessible through computers, and that could be used distinctively for official purposes with a great interface like whatsapp. This gap was capitalized by “Slack”, (which raised $250 million in funding from Softbank and operates within fortune 500's) and it’s Indian rival “Flock” (founded by Indian Tech billionaire Bhavin Turakhia and operates within popular Indian brands, media companies, budding startups over the globe) that are disrupting traditional e-mail communication by simplifying collaboration, project management channels making them more productive, transparent and efficient.

In modern day businesses 80% of the work is done via devices, Flock has reduced internal email by an average of 54% and has tremendously increased team productivity by 40%, transparency and efficiency by 60%; growing at a pace of 200% in the last year. Flock offers project collaboration tools like shared to-dos, polls, reminders, virtual meetings, audio+video calls, integrated with multiple tools from the Playstore to get work done faster. Players like Facebook, Workplace, TeamChat, Yammer, Hipchat and Microsoft Teams are also aggressively competing in this space, thus the ‘Enterprise Collaboration Market’ today is throbbing with energy and is expected to grow at a compound 13.2% to reach nearly $50 billion by 2021.

A Fintech marvel revolutionizing the insurance industry

“Lemonade Inc” is a remarkable insurance carrier for homeowners and renters that is leveraging the power of AI, behavioral economics and technology. The insurance industry has been operating the same way ever since its inception. Since the profits of insurance companies are directly proportional to the unclaimed, unaccepted policy amounts there are delays, lengthy procedures, agents, middlemen and lots of paperwork. Lemonade has made insurance cool by eliminating paperwork, replacing brokers with bots and machine learning. The business model charges a minimal fee for its services and a part of the underwriting profits go to non-profits. Thus it has gained a lot of popularity and momentum emphasizing on the social good rather than making insurance a necessary evil.

Currently operating in California, Illinois, Texas, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Texas this is a remarkable innovation in the Fintech industry that plans to expand through 2018 backed by Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Softbank at a valuation of around $600 million as of December 2017.

These business models haven't been created in a vacuum, through constant study of human behavior, conversion of severe problems of the society into value generating business models, creation of tools to ease economic activities, constant adaptation and creative thinking these radically successful businesses have evolved. A few more great examples are WeWork , NIO , Stripe , Virgin Hyperloop One , Airbnb.

"A game changing Innovation may be right under your nose, technology will keep evolving, adaptation is a skill to learn. Make sure you keep your eyes wide open for innovations that can help take your product to the next level."

We need to consider where the human race goes from here. We need to think about what is possible. Fifty or 60 years ago, no one really believed companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Facebook would be where they are today, same goes for Japanese electronics makers and Chinese manufacturing giants, but these things happened. Peter Thiel in his book 'Zero to One' has brilliantly stated that the next Bill Gates will not build an operating system, the next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine and the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys you aren't learning from them! Thus solving challenges of the present and the future by thinking out of the box is the secret to create value in the world.

Lastly, in a world which is increasingly dominated by data and analytics.. focus on trends that make the most sense to your business setting, competitive environment, resources and vision. Be bold, think big, dare to experiment, fail and succeed. The timing has never been any better. That's the real beauty of being a leader, manager, business owner or marketeer. Wishing all of you a lot of fun and success building some great companies and brands through 2018!

#IndiaStudents

Disclaimer: This article is solely for educational purposes. The author does not aim to glorify or vilify any company, brand or person. The author has only presented his perspective and an analytical account.