The opportunity mindset

There was an MNC making shoes. The director of the company sent his regional manager to Africa to assess the continent’s potential to buy shoes. After a short stay, the manager returned and reported “People walk bare footed in Africa, no one wears shoes, hence no potential to sell shoes there”. The director was not a man who would easily take no for an answer. He sent another manager to make another independent assessment. On his return, the second manager was jumping with joy, when he declared – “There is a huge market for shoes in Africa, as people walk bare footed and no one wears shoes. So high potential for our company to sell shoes” The second manager saw the opportunity behind the apparent difficulty. He was promoted and given the assignment to be the business head of the continent. While others look for difficulty behind every opportunity, this person had the mindset to see the opportunity behind every difficulty.

One has seen this happen quite a few times in real life. About 10 years back, Notebook PC’s were relatively high priced commodities. The starting price was above Rs.50K per unit and the Notebook PC penetration rate was quite low in India then. As a product manager, one had to make a decision whether we had to import high-end notebooks worth Rs.1.2 Lakh per unit, which had very fancy features at that time – like DVD writer, capability to edit videos, superior quality graphics and speakers. Conventional wisdom would have advised otherwise – apart from the existence of the market itself, there was a real risk of carrying inventory of such high priced stocks. On the contrary, I saw a great market opportunity to introduce unprecedented features for the first time in the Indian market. We led our marketing efforts with the high priced notebooks as the leader product, highlighting the unique features. This was an absolute contrast to our competitors advertising low priced notebooks. This high end strategy worked very well and positioned our brand as a leader. We not only sold the entire lot of high end notebooks, we also sold many medium & low priced notebooks at very good margins.

Only a few people have the mindset to see a great opportunity behind a difficulty. Everyone saw evils like Sati (Widow burning), Child Marriage and Polygamy in Hindu religion – but Ram Mohan Roy saw an opportunity to reform the religion with Education and Brahmo Samaj. Everyone saw sick, dying and homeless people – but Mother Teresa saw an opportunity to serve them with her Charity home in Calcutta. It was CK Prahalad, the IIM-A and Harvard B-School trained professor, who first saw the over 3 Billion poor people on the planet, not as a difficulty, but as a market opportunity to be served by companies for profit. Korean companies like LG, Samsung and Hyundai, though relatively new to Indian market, saw very big opportunities to grow compared to their long entrenched rivals like Philips and Sony. Entrepreneurs created brands, where others saw difficulty. When all people saw only difficulty – Captain Gopinath created Deccan Air, Sunil Mittal created Airtel and Narayana Murthy created Infosys – by seeing the opportunity behind the apparent difficulty.

So next time, we see a difficulty, let us develop the mindset to look at the opportunity behind it.

Good luck!

Nash