When a game changing event or product threatens the well-being your company or industry, sometimes the best thing you can do when you feel like you're losing control is to "turn into the skid."
Early on in your auto driving experience, you were told that if you ever start to lose control of your vehicle on an icy road, you should turn your wheels into the skid in order to correct your direction and reclaim control of the car. I think that creatively, this principle can be used to course-correct for your business innovations, as well.
One example...
There's no arguing that harsh economic realities and advancements in virtual meeting technologies has dramatically impacted the business travel industry. Companies that once had no other option than to physically transport a representative to an event across the country, now have many other options at their disposal. They can choose not to attend the event at all, they can arrange conference calls, video calls, purchase DVDs or CDs of the events, create online meetings, trade emails, create wiki sites, blogs, podcasts, meeting summaries, and even follow along in real time via Twitter or web video sites like uStream... and probably a dozen other ways I haven't thought to list.
What if one travel company turned into this skid in order to correct their course? Instead of offering just another 'promise to match the lowest price' -- what if one of these business travel specialists stepped up to help their clients determine which meetings they really needed to attend, and facilitated virtual meeting options on their behalf for the ones they did not need to physically attend?
What's stopping Uniglobe from embracing the innovative tools of companies like Webex, GoToMeeting, PBwiki, uStream, Skype, and Dabbleboard to construct a simple link collection of all the best virtual meeting tools to benefit the changing needs of their clients?
What if they took it a step further and created a private-label version of these utilities and offered them for free (or fee) to their client base? If their travel clients already think of this company as their means of getting to meetings in the physical world, why not carry over that thinking into the virtual world? Why wouldn't a client use a TravelSolutions, Uniglobe, or Travel Partners branded online meeting tool instead of having to potentially create a new account and incur separate billing from some other company? Especially if the travel company has already established trust and reliability with their client (and made the tools easy and convenient to use.)
Remember, the next time you feel like you're losing control of your business, try turning into the skid to correct your course using innovative ideas -- and regain control of your destiny.
Labels: Ideas, Innovation
