The Business Opportunities of Tomorrow:

Whatever it is, it is already getting old. Within five years, 80 percent
of all products and services offered today will be either
The Principle of the Offensive—Dare to Go Forward 45
obsolete or significantly modified from their current form. If a
product works, it is already obsolete.

Your competitors are bringing new products and services, and improvements on
existing products and services, to the market faster than you
can keep track. You can’t afford to become complacent. You
must be aggressively seeking out and developing the products
and services that your customers will be demanding in the years
ahead. If you don’t, your competitors will.

Your entire success will be determined by your ability to capitalize on the opportunities
of today and tomorrow. What are they? Sometimes small
innovations can lead to great victories, and even the downfall of
empires. The invention of the longbow totally transformed warfare
in the Middle Ages, allowing the peasants to defend themselves
against the nobles.

This led to an edict by Pope Innocent
III in 1139 A.D. to ban the longbow as a danger to humanity. The
stirrup, which gave an armed soldier or knight a firmer seat
when fighting from horseback, was a critical invention that gave
the forces of William of Normandy an advantage against the
troops of the English king Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in
1066 and helped lead to the conquest of England.

In the modern age, laser guided bombs enable an attacking
force to strike the enemy with such pinpoint accuracy that only
small quantities of ordinance are required. This has changed
the face of modern warfare and contributed to stunning victories
in both Iraq in 1991, and Afghanistan in 2001–2002.

1. What new products and services could you develop
   and bring to the market? What improvements could you
   make to your existing products and services to make them better,
   faster, cheaper, and more desirable to your customers of
   today and your customers of tomorrow? Should you be getting
   into completely new product and service areas in order to better
   serve your customers? These are key questions that you
   must ask and answer continually.

2. What are the systems, processes, procedures, and
   activities within your company that could be improved,
   outsourced, downsized, or eliminated? Change is going to
   take place whether you like it or not. The only question is
   whether you will direct it or whether it will happen in a random
   and haphazard manner.
   Continually look around you, seeking means of improving
   the way that you operate your business from the inside.

3. Strategic alliances: What are the different ways you
   could form alliances with people in businesses that are similar
   to your own and serve similar customers? A referral is
   worth fifteen cold calls on a new customer. How could you piggyback
   on the established credibility of other organizations to sell
   more of your product or service to the same type of customers?

4. Distribution channels: What additional opportunities
   exist for you to distribute more of your products or services
   through your existing distribution channels or
   through other distribution channels? Could you create new
   products and services that you could sell through new distribution
   channels that don’t even exist for you today? What are all
   the different ways in which you could get more of your products
   and services to more of your customers in a profitable manner?