A very simple strategy for success

The easiest way to become successful is to find someone else who is successful , study how they have become successful and then emulate them. In a competitive world, this strategy can be taken further by finding somebody who is successful, studying what they do and then finding a way to do it better.

While writing this book I chanced to meet a young entrepreneur who had gone from a computer in his bedroom to a rapidly expanding business in a matter of months. Venture capitalists were falling over themselves to give him capital. He'd started off by setting up a server and offering Web space and advice to local businessmen for them to be able to run their own e-business.

How he had succeeded so quickly was that he'd studied the services being offered locally by other hosting services. He'd arranged his system to be able to offer these same services, but, then looked around to see what other services he could add to his system that could give him a competitive edge. This allowed him to sell his service because it offered more. It is a simple strategy that has been used since time immemorial.

Of course, he is vulnerable. He has played a game of leap frog. There is no way that he can prevent his competitors playing the same game and leap frogging over him to regain the initiative. In a multitude of different ways this is happening in all areas of the e-business environment. It is the strategy that is the driving force of change in the world of technology and electronic communications.

With the realisation that in an environment of constant change a successful strategy is to keep leap frogging, it becomes sensible to examine this process of leapfrogging more closely. After all, it is a very simple strategy and is available for anyone to play. The question then becomes: "How can you play leap frog better than your competitors"? This leads to the question: "Who are the best leapfroggers?"

The answer to this question is not found in the world of e-business, or, even in the world of business at all: it is found in the biological world of nature. There, vast ecologies of organisms are constantly trying to leap frog over each other in a constant struggle for reproduction and survival. In this environment, organisms are continually keeping ahead of their competitors by adding new or improved features - through acquiring new genes.

There is another important similarity. Take a close look at any biological ecosystem. Is it possible to find any single organism that exists in isolation? Isn't every organism dependent upon others for its existence? Isn't there a variety of different food chains? A variety of complex symbiotic partnerships and associations? The more one looks, the more one finds that the existence of any organism is integrated into an enigmatic, complex whole of interacting life forms. Isn't this similar to way humans and their organisations exist? Isn't this the way the Internet is evolving?

It is in seeing the world of e-commerce as being similar to a biological ecosystem that any business enterprise can be put into perspective. Success can then be seen in terms of a competition to efficiently integrate within an ecosystem rather than to strive for individuality.