How to Address Disruptive Opportunities, Trends, and Threats

Nowadays, staying ahead requires more than just keeping up with the latest trends - it demands a keen understanding of the disruptive opportunities and threats specific to your industry.

They may be trends overseas in your industry you see coming, or perhaps a localised disruptive change or business model you see evolving.

It's a broad topic but rather than wax lyrical on the theory, let's just look at one hypothetical and one real-life examples from different industries where Founders have seen, and then addressed or harnessed some disruptive threats or opportunities to protect their businesses.

Example 1 - Education Business (Hypothetical Scenario)

Imagine you're running an education business, where you design and deliver accredited courses like vocational certificates, diplomas etc.

There's a current global AND local trend in accredited education towards "micro-credentialing".

What I mean by micro-credentialing is the unbundling of long 3-year degree or 2-year diploma-type programs into smaller "bite size" chunks.

This means if someone wants to take just a single component and get a certificate for that bit, they can, or if they want to stack components together to make up a full qualification like a degree or diploma, they can.

That's not just bite-size learning, that's bite-size certification.. quite a shake-up of traditional multi-year course formats for providers like universities and public vocational businesses like TAFEs (in Australia).

So how would that disruptive learning model affect you if you ran this business?

It would affect how you market programs, how you build programs, how you think about pricing (standalone units vs. bundles) and so on.

So you could choose to re-build your programs and now offer them "unbundled" so you can take advantage of the trend... or you might decide you don't actually have the necessary expertise or knowledge in your team to think about it correctly. But you don't want to bury your head in the sand.

So maybe a second option is to acquire some talent, or a company, that specialises in micro-credentialing. Or partner.

This allows you to gain valuable insights, and seize the opportunity without letting it disrupt your core operations or putting all your eggs in this basket.. after all, it might be a "hype cycle" and the demand could dissipate quickly.

Example 2 - Property Investment (Real-Life Scenario)

There's an Australian business I know who dealt with the talent shortage that everyone in Australia is complaining about very effectively, which makes for a good example of how to get proactive, when everyone else is just complaining and waiting for a major trend to go away.

Cohen Handler is a national Buyers Agency (who help investors find and secure property) that several years back was growing very quickly but struggling to get enough talented staff.

They were fighting with their competitors, to essentially poach from each other to supply talent to meet customer demand for more Buyers Agents.

They changed tack. They decided to build their own supply.

They created the Buyers Agent Institute where they took untrained people with the right characteristics and attributes, and trained them in how to be Buyers Agents.

They established what became a solid and fast-growing training business which allowed them to secure the best talent by training people for the industry, and taking the best. Yes that means they built a talent pipeline for competitors too, but they took the best and trained them with their philosophies.

This created a strong and secure talent pipeline, giving them ample fuel to meet customer demand whilst their competitors continued to lag behind.

It's a great example of how you can think differently about a disruptive factor (talent shortage) and find a way to own it and solve it with a long-term solution that yes, required real investment, but provided a competitive advantage over the medium term.

Okay... So How Should I Approach This for My Business?

I have 5 questions you need to ask yourself:

1. What things can I see happening overseas in my industry that could represent an opportunity here?

2. What technologies are just beginning to emerge in my industry, and how could they benefit my business if I engaged with them early?

3. What is impacting the business or lives of my customers, and how could I play a part in helping them deal with those or take advantage of those trends? (adds more value to your customer)

4. What am I hearing on the grapevine about how customer preferences might be changing in my industry?

5. What part of my business model does my gut tell me is ripe for disruption because customers get annoyed by it?

Still Feel Stuck? Here's How to Get Some Extra Insight.

If you're struggling at all on this one, here are four ways you can get some further insight to get going:

1. Speak to your customers about what things are affecting them or what they expect will affect their business or life over the coming 12-24 months.

2. Talk to your team about what they have heard or noticed changing in conversations with customers.

3. Start a relationship with someone in your industry overseas - you're unlikely to be competing with each other - share thoughts on what trends you're both seeing to help each other stay aware.

4. If you're time-poor but know you'd like to do some desktop research, pay a researcher on Upwork to do the heavy lifting for you, give them a little brief on what to look for - you'll find some exceptional people for $10-$30 USD an hour who can do a good job on desktop research to get you started.

Want to Take Your Strategic Thinking to Another Level?

If you're eager to take a pause from the day-to-day operations of your business so you can step back and build a growth plan for the next three years that ensures you end up with a better business, not just a bigger one, then I invite you to join us at the upcoming ScaleUps Roadmap program.

The program is designed to help you create a powerful growth strategy, optimise your business model, and end up with a super-clear and simplified execution plan you and your team will love. You don't want to miss out! Check out the program here and register your interest today to secure your spot.

Okay, that's it… go for it!

If you'd like to step back from your business and do some in-depth planning on how you can maximise your valuation in the next three years worth of effort, you should join us at the next ScaleUps Roadmap program. We help you build a kick-arse growth strategy, optimise your business model for scalability and valuation and much more! Check out the program here and register your interest now.