SME CLINIC With Kola Owolabi
We were going to round off this series with the last post. However I just remembered that there is something too important not to mention before we go to something else. It is the fact that without research there is no future for that business of yours. My deep apologies for the way I put it. It is like a man without children; the name of that man may not be recognized again in future because there is no offspring that will carry on with the identity of the man. Without research, the future is closed.
Research is about looking diligently for how to get better at what you are doing, how to improve on the result of yesterday and today so that your tomorrow can be guaranteed. If you consider cars made about 50 years ago, you will not want to move near them today. However, the same cars were the rave then. Imagine if you are a car dealership and you arrange the old model Mercedes Benz 230 SEL cars in your garage for sale.
Nobody will come in to take any look at what you are selling. So if that is your dealership and you don’t bother to find out the type of cars that people go for now and you still stick to your “obokun” Mercedes Benz as we used to call it then, you will soon be out of business.
God left a lot of room for man to do research and continue to discover new things. That is why after the business of creation, which lasted five days, God took His rest and asked man to continue from there. He asked man to continue to replenish and exercise dominion on what He created. With all sense of responsibility, I like to announce to you that God hid the solution of whatever challenge you may be confronted with in life in research. So if there is an issue of concern in your business that is challenging your birth right to dominate, what to do is to commence a search for the answer and your dominion will be restored. There is no challenge in business that does not have a solution. What it takes is for someone who will sit up to take responsibility and search out the matter diligently enough and the solution will come up.
Look at what the internet came to do. Communication used to be through wires in the case of the analog telephone. Cables had to be laid from continent to continent to carry man’s voice. Actually, at a time in Lagos we were going to Ikeja telephone exchange for international calls. The whole Nigeria had about 400,000 telephone lines then, talking about thirty – forty years ago.
Today, internet technology, has made nonsense of wires and digital calls made from the comfort of one’s home is of better quality than calls going through the old telephone exchange. Nigeria has today, over 200 times the number of telephone lines during the analog era. Research gave us the smart phone which is as capable as the laptop. Research is ongoing to even replace the smart phone we are all carrying about today.
Businesses configured around the laptop had to give way for the businesses now based on smart phone technology. Things will still shift somewhere else tomorrow. What is difficult to understand is that if you just sit down and worry only about the present of your business, you may not be a serious player in that market again. The future is more important than today and research is the connection between the present and the future.
Kola Owolabi(FIMC) 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 08023203198
