You’re not a startup—and why that’s a good thing.
We frequently hear how big established businesses, governments, even the military need to be like startups.
Let me get this off my chest first—government and the military shouldn’t be like startups—EVER, because they aren’t businesses, and it’s utterly asinine to suggest that they are.
Secondly, most startups, as in 90%, have no market need, or no cash, or have the wrong team, or get beaten in the market, or have cost and price issues, or have a bad product design, or have a flawed business model, or poor marketing, or ignore their customers, or mistime the market, or have no experience, or lack skills in growing and running a business. And they don’t make it. NINETY PERCENT.
So there’s that.
I’m assuming the people telling you that you need to be like a startup don’t mean THAT 90%, they mean the tiny minority of startups…the ones who make it, and become a large successful organization with products, and clients, and staff, and profits to invest in new ventures and products—just like big businesses just like you.
Startups strive to be big businesses, and big businesses strive to be like startups…
Then there are some other vital reasons big businesses are not startups.
Affordable loss, when you don’t have much you have little to lose, you can roll down the shutters and close it up if it doesn’t work out. But if you have a brand, and customers, and employees—thousands of them—there is more at stake, much more. The risk calculation is entirely different when answering the question, “What’s the worst that could happen?”. Conversely, big businesses can absorb losses in the early stages of the innovation process.
Strategic Fit, big businesses have strategies, and they are related to their reason for being, their big why - where a startup can be opportunistic and move around, big business, by and large, can’t and probably shouldn’t - investors would freak-out and it doesn’t leverage what you have and what you’re good at.
Assets, the enormous unfair advantage that big business has—resources, stuff. Stuff like capital, market presence, clients, credit, expertise, physical assets, processes, suppliers, relationships, a brand, etc. Startups sell their soul to try and get those. But when you have assets, you can be ingenious with them—making clever, practical, and original use of what you have to create something new. And the more assets you have the more you can do with them.
Risk Management, strategy, and existing assets are pitched by the “be like a startup” crowd as anchors holding big business down, and they’re not—we believe they’re rockets, these are the things that can propel you on your Bold Path to Next at supersonic speeds, indeed why Big Business is better positioned to innovate.
You as a “Big Business” already have everything that startups crave, you don’t need, or want to be like them—they want to be like you!
What you want to do is leverage the massively unfair advantage of being big, of being who you are—you need to do the smart things to continuously innovate, change, and grow in a strategic, rigorous, and process-driven way.
Learn fast and cheap—because you can, not because you have to.
Share what you learn—learning is an option amplified with size.
Create and manage a balanced portfolio of options—startups can’t do a spread, they’re betting on one horse.
Make data-based decisions—you have the resources to gather your own data quickly.
Leverage your assets—know what you have to use.
Build great teams—much of the talent is already in the building and knows you.
Create different rules, measurements, and incentives for different portfolio stages.
The super seven—make better decisions based on simple criteria
Follow a process, have a plan for different outcomes.
If you are not doing those, realize it’s a choice, not some arbitrary characteristic of size. You choose to do things differently; these are the sorts of things that are cultural, not legislated, or innate.
At Solve Next we help you to develop an organizational capability so your people can think and act in ways that drive change and for the organization to create a culture and environment that supports it.