Changing Business Environments & How To Adapt
Change is inevitable in the world of business, and there is no way to know when it might come. The reason that the most successful businesses in the world have managed to stay on top is that they have been able to quickly adapt to these typically monumental changes and sometimes even use them to their advantage.
Being able to adapt isn’t a very easy thing for a business to do. If it were, then there wouldn’t be so many businesses that fail.
However, by following a few of these tips and using the current tools and technology available, you can learn how to adapt to an ever-evolving business environment.
Pay Attention To Your Surroundings
The world that we all share can get pretty complicated quickly. There are so many issues that can affect your business, even if they seemingly have nothing to do with you. Most of these issues will involve various social causes, economic downturns, or political movements.
If you aren’t aware of your surroundings and the world you live in, then how could you ever hope to adapt to any changes that might occur? One example would be Nike and their advertisements featuring Colin Kaepernick.
The polarizing NFL quarterback was essentially banned from playing the sport after controversially taking a knee while the Star-Spangled Banner was played before games. This created somewhat of a national firestorm and debate about race relations, police brutality, and military appreciation.
Nike is one of the biggest sponsors of the NFL and had a personal contract with Kaepernick, so they had a decision to make. Release him from his contract and cut all ties with him or honor their contract and support their business partner.
Nike chose the latter and decided to make a series of commercials that addressed the issues surrounding Kaepernick directly and took a firm stance of support. The highly risky gamble paid off, and Nike stock prices reached an all-time record high.
Regardless of the politics of the situation, Nike made an ingenious business move and reaped the benefits because they paid attention to their surroundings.
Make The Best Of Your Current Situation
Life and business are both often unfair. You can do everything right and still not succeed. That was the case for nearly 100,000 businesses that closed down permanently in the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic.
No one could have predicted or prepared for the pandemic, and a lot of businesses were shut down. However, the surviving businesses had to get pretty creative and make some huge changes in order to stay open.
When indoor dining was shut down to flatten the curb of coronavirus, there were many restaurants that quickly shut down. Other restaurants knew they wouldn’t be able to reopen if they closed and so they started to work within the limitations of the situation.
Some of them began to offer delivery services at a cheaper rate than popular apps like DoorDash or UberEats. Others installed drive-thru windows for no contact pick up and created an outdoor dining location. There were even some that took their business mobile with the help of food trucks or created meal kits to sell to customers quarantined in their homes.
It wasn’t just restaurants that had to adapt either. Most grocery stores implemented some kind of curbside pickup option to help limit customer contact. They offered to basically do the shopping for their customers based on the item list provided.
When the customer arrived at the store, they would wait in their car, and an employee would bring the items out and load them into their vehicle contact-free. These are just a few examples of the thousands of creative new innovations that businesses had to undergo in order to stay open.
It won’t always be easy, but making the best of your current situation can be the difference between staying open and shutting down.
Embrace New Technology
One of the major reasons why the world seems to be changing so quickly is due to the creation or innovation of new technology. It wasn’t very long ago when having the internet and a cellular telephone were luxuries.
Now there are over 4.6 billion people with access to the internet and just under 5.3 billion that own a cell phone. Even smartphones and apps are still relatively new, with the first app stores hitting the mobile market in 2008.
The businesses that embrace new technology are usually the ones that have found better long-term success. Take Blockbuster for example. The video renting service was an absolute titan of the industry for decades and reached its peak in the early 2000s.
They soon ran into a minor level of competition in the form of Netflix. The web-based service would allow you to select movies to rent and mail them directly to you. They boasted a much larger catalog than Blockbuster and didn’t have late fees, so some people started to prefer the service even if it was a little slow.
Netflix had the idea of creating a web streaming service for their movies that wouldn’t require renting or physical copies. They went to Blockbuster with their idea and asked for a merger. Blockbuster scoffed at the notion as they believed the physical renting industry would never die, and there were no profits to be made in streaming online.
A few years later, Netflix is valued at over $203 billion, and Blockbuster has gone from having over 9,000 stores at their peak to just a single remaining store open. In the end, it was Blockbuster’s stubborn refusal to adapt to new technology that cost them their empire.
Keep An Eye On The Competition
You should always keep a close watch on the competition in your field of business and assume they are doing the same to you. There is so much that you can learn from the actions of your competition.
Whenever they introduce a new product or make sudden changes to their business models, you should watch intently and study the results. There is a lot that you can learn about your own business based on the failure or success of your rival's new direction.
In business, it’s a very common belief that imitation is often better than innovation. For example, McDonald’s was not the first fast-food chain. They took the concept from White Castle, improved on it, and became one of the most successful franchises in history.
Another example was RC Cola releasing a diet version of their popular soft drink. A few decades later, Coca-Cola would release its version, and it would go on to become one of the most popular beverages in the world.
However, it’s not always such a sure-fire way to achieve success. There are several occasions where the original dominates the imitation. For example, after Apple released the iPod in 2001 to wild success, chief rival Microsoft immediately set about releasing their own version of the probable media player.
They would eventually release the Zune in 2006, but the product never even came close to the popularity of the iPod and was ultimately ruled a failure. The difference between knowing when to imitate and when to innovate can make or break a business, and keeping an eye on the competition can help you to decide what you should do next.
The Takeaway
There is no way to prevent change from happening, but that doesn’t have to be a scary concept. Not all change is bad and sometimes will bring on tools that can make your life as a business owner much easier.
Since change can’t be avoided, all you can do is follow these principles to help you adapt more easily to change. By paying attention to the world at large, making the best of your current situation, embracing new technology, and monitoring your competition, you can help your business to adapt more easily.
Any business that is unable to adapt will almost certainly not be in business for very much longer.
SOURCES
Why Your Business Should be Able Adapt at Any Moment | Business.com
Nike sales booming after Colin Kaepernick ad, invalidating critics | ABCNews.com
