«Learn the failure stories, not the success stories. Failures are not less important than triumphs!» – We have collected the best quotes of a world-class business futurist Adrian Slywotzky after his intensive educational programs in Lviv and Kyiv.
It was in early April that Adrian Slywotzky held an intensive course «Business Design Architecture» in Kyiv which gathered over 200 participants. They were the first to learn about the new trends on the world market and various directions for business growth:
- If you believe that your business model will stay the course of one more decade, thus you are mistaken. In our understanding of the very essence of a business model we all rely on our gut instinct, but on the strategic level it lies in a number of seemingly simple questions which don’t have unanimous answers: who is my customer and who is not? Whose offer I would decline? If you got the answers wrong, everything else would fail as well. At the forefront are those who create new business models and offer new values to customers.
- The biggest mistake we all are making, which in any case is natural, is quitting just a step from making our product magnetic.
- The sky is the limit. Think about the affordability and individualization of your product: in which way the thing we offer today is better than the one we offered yesterday?!
Afterwards, in Kyiv in the space of two days Adrian Slywotzky had run a program for business owners «Business Design: T&T»:
- «The world has changed. Those details and the history, which have previously been in the background and thus invisible for the customer, are now prioritized. This testifies to the increase in the value the companies receive from their external partners and providers. What would the Apple company be if there was no content in the Apple Store created by its partners?»
While in Lviv during the closed educational program for the participants and graduates of the UCU Lviv Business School, Adrian Slywotzky expanded on «Business Systems of the Future». The best quotes of a top-notch business futurist were written down by Veronika Savruk, LvBS graduate.
- The customers are changing and if we remain ignorant of those changes, we risk losing everything. This is actually the worst case scenario when it comes to capital migration.
- Never ask your customers what they would change, better ask them what they find irritating. You need to know what hurts them. The human nature is such that we don’t perceive things as they are, but we perceive them the way we are. Therefore, we have to reprogram our minds and start with the customer thus leaving ourselves behind.
- Set a goal and resolve to reach it by 2020: you, your colleagues and every single person in your company has to read, speak and listen in English. It will help you think differently and make different decisions.
- What are three different business designs for each new growth initiative?
- Think which business model lies in the core of every successful company: Zara, IKEA etc., and try to guess what the future of this business model is. Don’t be afraid of being mistaken. All the companies which made a loss on capital migration, and there are nearly 80% of such companies, were not quite proactive.
- The customer is your priority, the apple of your eye when it comes to business.
- What is meant by magnetism? It’s the best functional aspect of my expertise multiplied by the tightest emotional connection of a customer with my product.
- The customers feel it when the employees admire their companies.
- Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but imitate.
- In the past, the best business model used to outweigh the best product. Nowadays, the best business system overrides the best business model.
- Work out your own slogan, the magnetic mission. The slogan makes the customer change his behavior, it moves heaven and earth and touches your heart. It generates unusual inner energy within the company.
- Smart people hate to fail: the smartest people love it. Failure is great, but only if it’s quick and cheap.
- Make haste slowly to get ahead quickly.
- The best decisions are made when you can establish those links which cannot be established by others, because others simply cannot see them.
- We learn more efficiently within a specific environment.
- Profitability – these are resources ready for reinvestment into a business and society.
- The companies are changing faster if they are changing their rhetoric.
- And finally, all your readings, knowledge and experience is good for nothing unless you put it into practice. Thus, act!
