Last week, I had the opportunity to be a Lecturer in a Master for future Entrepreneurs. It was very interesting and I, really, enjoyed the experience!
During the sessions appeared one of the usual questions of OUR classes, seminars, in-company training or startup meetings in order to define (or redefine!) the Business Model…
– Jordi, why is specialization so important?
In a GLOBALIZED world, there are plenty of people, enterprises… with a lot of money and contacts to create economies of scale, if the most important thing that you offer it is a low price… you will lose the battle!
BUT if you are focus in an INTERNATIONAL community of PEOPLE then you are focused on value and you can win the battle (you can call it, survive in the market or to be able to sell your startup for a very good price!)
First things first, let’s see some degrees of specialization. Here, I tried to explain this idea with the help of this pyramid:
You can apply this pyramid to ANY sector! – I said to the disruptive startups creators.
The first tier represents enterprises with no specialization whatsoever and focused on price. The second tier is for enterprises specialized in offering a specific product/service. It can be a new one or the usual BUT with interesting new features from the point of view of the customer. This is a good approach, nothing wrong with it BUT… We can go deeper in the segmentation process focusing on people. In the last tier, it is NOT enough to know that this segment want to buy a specific product/service, we have to know the reasons, the unsatisfied needs that make them to use this product/service…
One thing is to sell organic food to people that love organic food (second tier) the other is to know that they want organic food because they want to live more (QUALITY) years. Let’s see some examples…
A) The person married/ in love with a younger person.
B) The couple that have children at an advanced age and they want to be sure that they will see and enjoy their grandchildren…
Do you see? We can try to seduce the segment with our product (organic food) BUT in the third tier we can get some important competitive advantages:
1) You can create your OWN SnS
As you seduce a segment that is NOT a Dr. Frankenstein’s segmentation they will love to talk about their experiences. So, you can create your OWN Social Networking Site. I always believe that paraphrasing Alan kay “if you want to be serious about SnS you have to create your own ones.” This is very important because the competitive advantage of generic products/services is economies of scale BUT in specialized ones the competitive advantage comes from gaining the TRUST of the segment.
2) You can become a Super 3 (S3 ) for this community
You can sell MORE, both to the members of the community (you can sell anything interesting to them) and for any person/organization trying to seduce them. I try to represent this idea with this graphic that we saw in this posts.
Finally, last but definitely not least…
3) GROUPS!
You know me… “Groups” is another word carved into my mind. The possibility to create groups is a leverage to get a profitable and scalable business. Inside a specialized and INTERNATIONAL community is far easier to create groups and take the most of the PRO-AM idea. Groups in order to get discounts for services. Groups in order to get customized product/services for the community, even to create, communicate and commercialized new product/services based on the interest of your community.
I explained all these ideas to the entrepreneurs. Maybe some of them will take up the glove and apply these ideas in their disruptive startup… It will be my honor and my privilege to share their adventures, their success OR their opportunities to begin again, here!
Keep dreaming, keep working, keep enjoying Touristology!!!
