Doing Business the Silicon Valley way

Silicon Valley: is the mythical place where dreams and fortunes are made (and broken) in the tech world. It’s been an amazing confluence of geography, culture, networking and chance that have made it the tech capital of the world, and I think most people would agree they do things a little differently there.

But there’s much the rest of the business world can learn from tech start-ups and tech giants alike that can help a business in any field work smarter and be more competitive.

Think Outside the Box, or Better Still, Ignore the Box Entirely

Every year, new ideas come out of Silicon Valley that turn an industry on its ear — think Uber, AirBnB or Netflix. More traditional business sectors can learn a lot from this kind of total 180 degree innovation. Many times, tech companies don’t just try to improve on an existing product category, they go back to the source problem or question and ask themselves, “If there were no solution for this, how would I solve it today?” Innovation is the difference between the company that stagnates and slowly dies and the one that is propelled into new levels of profitability and relevance.

Clearly we’re not going to see investment bankers wearing shorts and ironic tee-shirts to the office any time soon, or sand volleyball games over the lunch hour at prestigious law firms. Nevertheless, there are concepts and innovations from Silicon Valley that even the most traditional businesses can adopt.

MVP

It doesn’t stand for “most valuable player,” but rather Minimum Viable Product. This is the idea that rather than starting with a complicated new product or idea, a company will figure out what is the minimum they can create that will be viable, in other words, that will generate sales. This is an excellent strategy for getting something to market quickly, generating cash flow, and getting feedback from real users. This leads us to another lesson, iteration.

Iterating

Think “Product 2.0;” tech companies are well known for iterating and improving on their products as they go. Something initially released as an MVP will go through multiple iterations adding new features and removing ones that don’t work or aren’t needed. In the tech world, this goes for everything from apps to smartphones, but it’s a concept that can — and should — be applied to many other business sectors. Don’t stop at the first version just because it works; keep iterating and improving on any idea.