ARE YOU WILLING TO CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS FOR IT TO SUCCEED?

THESE 4 COMPANIES DID, AND THRIVED.

By Trevor Stafford, Toronto freelance writer

“Nothing fails like success” -- K. Boulding

Mr. Boulding intended his pithy words to be a warning ­-- that the lessons learned from success are most often vanity and hubris. Like Icarus flying recklessly close to the sun, Boulding was reminding us that victory’s first flush often leads to a catastrophic fall.

For business owners and executives, Boulding’s quote presents an equally tender trap. Here, early success can make a company inflexible and fixed, like blinders on a plodding horse.

What results is a focus on the present instead of the future: short-term profits, services that don’t scale, and an inability to seize on massively disruptive ideas or products.

The following companies, however, extracted their ‘big idea’ in spite of early success, seizing on ideas and products that in some cases had nothing to do with what they had planned.

1. Flickr (Canadian) Founded 1994, sold to Yahoo for $35M in 1995
   The now ubiquitous photo sharing and photo-enthusiast community site was not born as such. Instead, Flickr was, from 1991-1993, an online role-playing game (MMOG) called Game Neverending.

   The founders noted that in-game photo sharing tools and functions were popular with users. They quickly built a product around it and the rest is history.

   “When we initially launched Flickr, it was just a stripped-down Game Neverending interface, with photos instead of game objects”

   http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000519.php
   

2. YouTube Founded 2005, sold to Google for 1.65B.

   Ever heard of Tune In Hook Up? Neither has anyone else, except perhaps for the founders of YouTube. Their idea for an (online) video dating service got some traction, but not the overwhelming, market-dominating, world-changing icon that they created in its wake.

3. Wrigley Gum
   
   One of the most famous companies in the world, this century-old business did not start out with the idea of filling mouths – unless it was to wash them out with soap! Instead, this baking powder and soap manufacturer used gum as a giveaway, a product enticement. William Wrigley Jr’s customers, however, clamored for the treat, so he gave them what they wanted.
   
   Today Wrigley’s grandson is worth an estimated $1.8 billion. That’s definitely something to chew on.

4. Nintendo
   
   Synonymous with video games, Nintendo has shed its corporate skin multiple times. Beginning (in 1950s Japan) as a wildly successful playing card company, a cutthroat domestic market forced the company to keep innovating -- branching into toys, electronic gadgets, and finally the games that have made it world famous.

Good thing too, because Super Mario playing cards would probably not have launched a billion dollar empire.

Trevor Stafford, Toronto freelance writer
A recovered ad writer and profligate tech geek based out of Toronto, Trevor now publishes an online magazine for fast-growth software companies. He can be reached at copywryter@gmail.com or followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/copywryter