Don’t reinvent the wheel, just add new tyres!

There is a model for the majority of internet businesses on stream, a model for businesses in general. Let’s face it, most of us are not geniuses, we’re not coming up with the next world changing, unbelievably great big thing. Most of us are just average folk with average ideas. I don’t see anything wrong with that but we still need to push ourselves a little beyond the average. Now I’m not saying we have to try and be geniuses but we do need something more.

When deciding on starting a business and choosing a particular niche, I think it is extremely important to look at businesses (successful or otherwise) that are currently operating in that particular niche and follow the model used but observe what can be done differently by you to improve it and provide a better service to your clients.

Digg.com

There really is nothing exceptional or outstandingly genius about the digg concept. Digg.com was initially a technology news website where the users submitted links to news stories. This already existed at Slashdot.com which was very successful at the time. What users of Slashdot.com were silently unhappy about was the fact that the site editors had the final say as to what would be shown on the website out of the submitted material of its users. So essentially what Kevin Rose did was give the social networking news site a twist by placing the power in the hands of its users.

Good ole Walmart

Everyone knows Walmart, the huge multinational chain of discount variety stores. The founder Sam Walton had worked in variety stores previously, like J.C. Penny prior to going into business for himself. How did Mr Walton add new tyres to the wheel? Well his concept was to mark up less than his competitors and take less profit per item but achieve higher sales per volume to make up the difference. I think it’s safe to say that these tyres are doing well on the original wheels of the old variety store.

Strangely enough while writing this post Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs Journey wrote a post as well saying sometimes you have to re-invent the wheel. It’s an excellent article, very extensive and filled with advice. At the end of it all I think we’re saying the same thing where you have to do things differently to some degree. I call it new tyres, but he calls it reinvention.

Well that’s it; I hope you have enjoyed my post. Thanks for reading.