SME CLINIC With Kola Owolabi
We have been treating for some time the issue of Research as a necessary ingredient for business success particularly for those who are gunning for the top of their market segment. For those who are starting business for the first time, if you want your business to make any meaningful impact in the marketplace and probably grow to market leadership, then you must do good research before you start and continue to do so as you go along.
Let me share the story of a top man of God in Nigeria who promoted a private university that has remained number one among its contemporaries almost since inception. He said he got together well research profiles of 10 leading universities in the world. He studied their ascent to the top and what made them to remain at the top. From his studies, he got to know the different strategies that were applied even when some of them ran into murky waters and were able to get out unhurt. He studied the nature of each one’s curriculum and instruction methodology and the unique selling point.
When he came out of the highly instructive digging which must have cost him sleepless nights, he came out with a blueprint of what to do with his proposed university project and get the same results that the ones he read their stories got. He put his plan into action and shot to the top of the market from the beginning and has remained on top since.
According to the Bible there is nothing new under the sun. What you want to do has been done before. The feat you want to perform has been performed before. This is where research comes in. Research enables you to unearth how people before you were able to successfully do what you intend to do. Upon discovering how it was done before, you only need to intentionally replicate what the other person did as diligently as possible and it is certain that you will get the same result.
If you are faced with a nagging challenge in your business today, just go digging for the experiences of those who were faced with the same challenge in the past and borrow a leaf from what they did to get out of the challenge and you will have a smooth sail out of that concern.
However, there is something very negative about research and one should be careful not to run foul of this thing. It is a grave mistake our research institutions including our universities fall into and which makes them almost of little impact particularly in the third world setting. The issue is in the area of implementation of research results. Research result is not for documentation but for implementation. One will discover that the likes of the founders of Microsoft, Facebook and many other major successful entrepreneurs of today are college dropouts.
They encountered some opportunities in form of ideas they had while they were in university and quickly dropped out to go and pursue implementation of those ideas. They did not wait to package those opportunities in well written research papers and make presentations at conferences all over the place. Usually, in the university setting, research results are written with implementation requirements that probably needed huge capital outlay to implement the idea.
The huge capital outlay must have brought a mental block and fear in the mind of prospective business people who would have wished to implement those ideas. At the end of the day, the ideas end up gathering dust on University libraries’ shelves. But the Bill Gates’ and Mark Zuckerberg of this world just jumped to the market with those ideas and pursued implementation at the lowest level and with whatever resources they had in their possession. Today, they rule the business world. This is the way to treat the outcome of research, just jump to the market with it and go on with the implementation using the resources in your possession.
Kola Owolabi(FIMC) Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants is the CEO of David Richard Associates based in Igbesa, a surburb of greater Lagos, in the vicinity of Crawford University. The organization has had the opportunity to execute landmark business development (business plan preparation and conduct of feasibility studies) and rmarket research briefs for organizations both within and outside Nigeria. He can be reached by phone or WhatsApp through 080232031
