You need to develop a mindset that wants to change, innovate, and improve, not just imitate.
There’s a tendency in life to be safe and do what others have done. It’s an understandable impulse but shortsighted because we are all affected by COVID-19.
One of the great things about being a small ethnic, marginal, relatively poor, trailing, but rising is that you have the opportunity to see what you want to imitate and, more important, what you want to skip.
Here is an example in telecom: Both India and Africa have taken similar paths toward mobile telephony and bypassing landlines altogether.
The right time is now for a small business like a small developing country can apply this kind of leapfrog mentality and find a different path to a better future. But the key, which leapfrog advocates often miss, is how you go about creating this alternative path. Technology advances and people are quirky and unpredictable.
It’s wise to have a plan but unwise to rely solely on the plan and to presume that you can see the future. Strategic-planning, forecasts can only go so far, so rather than trying to predict the future, you should fit yourself into the future as it happens.
- The first assumption is that we’ll need a different type of infrastructure for your business
- A second assumption is a widespread adoption by staff and clients
- A distributed system is created leveraging cloud infrastructure and bundled services – do more with less.
If these assumptions are correct, the future of small business will look very different from February 1, 2020.
One thing I have learned is that everything needs to develop continually. A successful venture does not happen the first time around. The critical missing link for leapfrogging is a better policy framework, and COVID-19 is going to spark innovation and experimentation by necessity —one that reimagines the future by doing instead of talking.