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May 30
2009
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What Would Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark Do If He Were in the Apartment Business?
Posted by: Eric Brown on May 30, 2009 01:00 Tagged in: Untagged
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I love long relaxing weekends, as it allows me to detach and really think about things. It is also a great time to read and catch up on RSS Feeds. Lately, I have been reading a lot about Tim Ferris, and his book The Four Hour Work Week.
Tim has an interesting blog post from last week Start-up Strategy: To Change the Game, Change the Economics of How It’s Played which includes an interview he did with Alan M. Webber co-founder of Fast Company magazine and former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review. Apparently Alan developed a very interesting habit more than 20 years ago, when he began to carry a supply of 3 x 5 index cards wherever life took him. He wrote down and collected the lessons and insights he gleaned from his experiences traveling the world and in his interactions with people ranging from CEOs and spiritual leaders to basketball coaches, novelists, and stars from dozens of other worlds…
Alan goes on to say;
“The game today is all about changing the game. Competing head-to-head on products and services is table stakes. Innovators are looking for a new business model that will destabilize their rivals and produce a breakthrough opportunity. In fact, in a recent survey of top-level executives in established companies IBM found that the biggest shared concern is that somewhere in the world—in a garage or a dorm room— someone is coming up with a new business model that will overthrow their established way of doing business.
What would Craigslist founder Craig Newmark do to our beloved Apartment Rental Business?
What would happen if what we typically charge for, say rent, were Free? Free, as the saying goes, is a pretty good price. What if we did what King Gillette did and give away the razor? What would we charge for?
There are a lot of ways to reinvent an economic model. But most established companies are unwilling to do it because it would mean destabilizing their own operation. The Trail Blazers, those who really turned the model inside out changed forever the way business is done on their given fields.
What can we do in the apartment business that creates a model that will Overthrow the Established Way of Doing Business.
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Love the headline -
I left a comment on your Facebook site suggesting that Craig would leave the apartment business and start an on-line classified business. ;-))
All kidding aside, your point is well taken in the sense that other bellwether business models have been turned upside down and re-invented. I think it is in those examples that we will find both inspiration and the courage to rip off some cool stuff in the coming year. I borrow from some of your comments to say the the following; it's all about trying, failing fast, tweaking, fine tuning and most of all being humble enough to dump things when they don't work. Moreover, it's the drip. Drips that soon form streams that give way to creeks that give way to rivers and lakes that give way to blue oceans. It has a compounding affect as each piece builds on the success of the other.
Here's to blue oceans that will revolutionize the way we do business.
M