Noted businessman Paul Marsden says, “Business is all about solving people's problems – at a profit.”
Though there are number of ways in which people's problem can be solved but, in this article, I have tried to emphasize how entrepreneurs
have used concept of bringing things closer to customer in order to provide the solution.
In 15th century, ice was being
harvested in cold regions with frozen lakes. Emperor and ultra-rich people used
to send their horse cart to purchase the ice blocks and bring to their place (travelling hundreds of kilometers). Entrepreneurs in the business of ice
harvesting realized that not everybody can send their horse cart and to
purchase ice from frozen lakes hence these entrepreneurs brought the ice blocks
to cities to sell and made huge profit as buyer based increased many folds. Looking
at the high demand for ice, in early 20th century, entrepreneurs
with help of scientists developed a refrigeration system thus ice factories were built in the metro cities, people from
smaller cities needed to travel to bigger cities for buying ice. Looking at the
inconvenience of customers, entrepreneurs made household refrigerator, thus eliminated
need to travel for buying ice.
Few centuries back, villagers used to bring
water from the river or pond by walking many miles. enterprenures realized that
if we dug well in the village, no need to travel for miles. Wells immensely
benefited all but still people need to travel few hundred meter to fetch the
water. To provide the convenience, entrepreneurs invented hand pump which was
installed just outside of house. Now, we get water through water pipeline in
our house.
Just half century back, for entertainment, people living in
small cities used to travel to metro city to watch the movie in theatre. Looking
at the demand, movie theatres were constructed in small cities to provide convenience
to small city consumers, and then television helped us get the entertainment in
our own house, and now we get the entertainment through our mobile device.
There are several more examples like from grocery available to city center and then availability at nearest 'Mom-and-pop' store and now being home delivered. (all these changes happened in just few decades). Today with just few touches on smartphone, we can almost everything home delivered. It's great convenience and that's why Amazon and host of IoT based businesses are thriving.
Obviously, you might have realized that
whatever we want desperately, comes near us. Thanks to entrepreneurial spirit
of somebody.
Therefore, if you want to become an
entrepreneur, you can explore what is that distant thing which we use and can
be brought closer to us. Can you think of some pain areas and ideas how to
solve them, if yes, then you need some courage to become successful entrepreneur.
All the best!
Manoj Tripathi
This article is taken from my bestseller book ‘Power of Ignored Skills’
