As a Candler bought a kettle and the formula for a drink and simply improved on the idea. He produced the drink in large containers and put them in public locations. That was how Coca cola exploded in sales.
One of the cheapest routes to creating products and services is to look around at the things that are being done already and to improve on them. In fact, start-up entrepreneurs are usually advised not to try to start with an entirely new product. It could be a costly experiment. The truth is that there are loads of products and services being supplied already. People are used to receiving them; ride on their reputation. There is a difference between an inventor and an entrepreneur. It is not every inventor that is an entrepreneur. That is why there are many inventors who never make money from their inventions. It is when entrepreneur come along, take the inventions and package them for business that those inventions begin to make money. So, the fact that you have invented a product or service does not mean you are going to make a lot of money from it. It is advisable that you look at the myriads of services and products that are being supplied now and just design something better.
There are a few entrepreneurs in Nigeria that I quite appreciate. One of them is the publisher of Success Digest magazine and Complete Sports series of magazines. He is a sport journalist who suddenly realized that all the newspapers only have sports sections in them. But there were sports enthusiasts whom as soon as they bought a newspaper, first flipped to the back page to read articles on sports. Then he thought, “It looks like some of these people are probably keen on sports only. What if we provide a newspaper that specializes in sports? What if we did a magazine that is focused purely on sports?” He did it and it was a success. I came across a young man also sometime back, his name is Shina Adegoke. He discovered that Nigerians see products, either from magazines or TV programs or on the internet that they would like to buy from overseas but they don’t have a means of paying for these products and the cheapest way for you to order for any product is for you to pay online via credit cards. So he opened a Website called NigeriaBuyOnline.com. The simple arrangement is that you pay to him, and he arranges your payment overseas.
TRY THIS EXERCISE
- Make a list of everything in your living room
- Go through the list
- Try and write down how each item could be supplied in a better way
This little exercise would help you develop your creativity. If you want to start a bank, well, go ahead and do that. The new generation banks did that and beat the first generation banks to it. The old banks used to give us tallies and keep us for hours, before the new banks came along offering 5 minutes banking services. That got everybody’s attention.
There is such enormous need in our formal education system. Over a million candidates wrote the last Universities put together cannot take more than a hundred and fifty thousand students, “Where should the remaining eight hundred and fifty thousand go?” Thank God for private universities. These needs are in all levels of formal education – Daycare, Nursery, Primary, Secondary and the University levels.
Secondly, there is such an awesome need for informal education in Nigeria today. You see a good chunk of what people study in school is useless for day-to-day living. What informal education does is to cut off all the flesh and go straight to the bones. That is what seminars, audio training cassettes, video training and books do. Out of this one-year course cut 11 months and 3 weeks, then organize a three-day seminar and give people what they can apply immediately. We need that more than ever before. One of the reasons people like Bill Gates of Microsoft did not finish school was because most of the things he was being taught were somehow not of benefit to him. He already had his mind on being an entrepreneur, and he wanted things that were relevant to his dream.
Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor Company, was a mechanic that used to repair motorcycles. He was trying to design an engine of his own because the motorcycles they had were imported from Europe. But he was having serious problems with his piston and rings, so he went to study mechanical engineering in the university. You know the only problem? He never attended the theoretical classes, just the practical. There was a particular course that addressed the problem he had. He managed to hang on in school until they got to the particular class that address his problem and as soon as he got what he needed, that was as many people as possible in Nigeria to teach the things that would be of immediate use to 120 million Nigerians, for example, entrpreneuring.
I believe that a season of insight and understanding would come on your life. As you move around town this week I believe there would be transfer of wealth and ideas to you. We have heard other names of people associated with particular lines of business but now; I believe it is your turn. I see you taking over. You will succeed.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
“Efficiency is doing better what is already being done” – Peter F. Drucker
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