"Being Different"

“Being Different”

What does it take to make it big in business?

Well for starters you got to have a sound business model, great understanding of the market and good people skills right? Well Almost.
There is a very important ingredient which people from Narayana Murthy to Bill Gates claim or demonstrate to have possessed, which is he ability to differentiate themselves from the others in other words they were different.

During one of his interviews, I believe it was Shekar Gupta’s ‘Walk the Talk’ Murthy clearly mentions that one reason why Infosys came up without much government interference was because the Babu’s in New Delhi never understood software actually at that time n one did as this was very different from the other businesses being done in India at that time. Those were the days when software was not like today where you see thousands of young people milling around buildings with structural glass, their access cards around their necks like the American Marines in those Hollywood flicks, looking more loyal than the king. It was more of body shopping, sending developers to the United States as independent contractors well before the off-shore onsite model had been developed.

“They were different”

Any business usually begins when someone has an idea different from the others. If we look at the LC of any industry, it has always been started by someone who just fit into the traditional business mould of that time.
A case in time my mental mentor Steve Jobs, who proudly proclaimed,
“Here’s to the misfits, the rebels, the square pegs in a round hole, the crazies”
So is being different the only thing?
Well not exactly you would require a strong business model, good management, and a eye for detail but unconventional thinking, being different is what it really should be based on.
The reasons are two fold:
The competition has not woken up to the fact that things could be run this way so any venture gets enough time away from media scrutiny to incubate and to perfect their act
Even the regulatory authorities never bother with such ventures hence the management can concentrate on the business rather than fire fighting day to day

So being different I not just a cliché is more of a philosophy which has bred champions in the past and continues to do so. So if you are nit different you can follow the beaten track of the new and improved business models which are paradoxes in themselves after all if it is new how it can be improved???