The one thing every business must do is create value. That value once offered to a customer should create added value on top, resulting in higher earnings. Inversely, the value you offer could potentially help the customer lose less money, resulting in savings.
Added value has two dimensions. Both are fine. However, they do require a different pitch and a way to prove upfront how additional money is going to be made or how less money will be lost.
Even though added value should be tweaked per region, take the different tastes of a can of Coke around the world, for instance. Some values are so universal that they can be applied, unaltered, around the world.
Take scooters, for example. People like to save time and energy. Hence the model of shared mobility through scooters, bicycles, or mopeds has been embraced by many cities worldwide.
However, some cities have failed to do so or even refused to do so. Maybe those cities deem their infrastructure unfit to allow for scooters? If so, that says something about that city and its mobility program in the first place.
For businesses providing universal values, obstacles can still be introduced nevertheless. Perhaps by policy- and lawmakers.
Businesses providing universal value-add should expect friction, sometimes from an unexpected place. Upon being hindered, those businesses can just move on to the next market. Whose loss is it anyway?
Some people in Belgium and the Netherlands are protesting against covid measures for different reasons. Even though the extent to which liberties have been limited are fundamentally different, both in severity and duration, some protesters claim the measures are too draconian.
Driving through the entire region (Belgium and the Netherlands) takes but a couple of hours. Regardless of the region’s small size, cultural differences occur logically.
In business, as in life, your service or product’s desired effect may be perceived differently within different subsets of your population, even in a tiny geographical region.
If a can of Coke tastes different around the world, it’s recommendable for all businesses alike to continuously ask for feedback throughout different segments of your customer base.
Upon establishing that; something of value isn’t necessarily commercially viable, and vice versa, two questions beg themselves. On the one hand, how does one make value commercially viable, or the other way around, how does one increase the intrinsic value of something that’s already commercially viable? That’s rather practical. On the other hand, how has the entrepreneur’s – and their customers’ world changed, once the above condition falls into place?
Entrepreneurship is (among many other things) having a clear vision of the future, the path towards it, how to bridge the period in-between, and how to anticipate the vision manifesting itself.
Two cookies, baked in the same factory, with the same recipe. Yet, one is generally considered tastier than the other.
One is distributed by a premium brand in equally premium shops, the other one is distributed in discount supermarkets.
If your brain can trick you into thinking one tastes better than the other, think of all the other effects perceived brand value has.
Your brand is an asset and needs constant nurturing.
Something of value isn’t necessarily commercially viable, and vice versa.
If you follow a strict and specific diet that you find helpful, but nobody else does, commercial viability will be tough. To build a business around that diet, your assets could potentially include books, restaurants, food boxes, and so on. However, without the commercial viability, getting to the point where the assets become exploitable is zero to none.
Inversely, if you come up with a diet that everybody loves but is detrimental to the body, you may have nailed commercial viability, but the value you created is doubtful and arguably unethical.
Successful businesses make the creation of added, genuine value commercially viable.