Reddit reviews Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
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I've been running my own businesses since 2005, first with Inkling and now with Draft.
No matter what you do you'll encounter competition. There will always be someone bigger than you who has more money and who customers already use. How are you going to deal with that? How are you going to out innovate? How are you going to get them to switch?
The best books on this subject that have influenced what I've done are:
These books address how you can look at the current products and processes your potential customers have so you can begin innovating.
In a nutshell, start looking at process you or your customer is involved with. What steps are in that process? Now how can your product or service combine or eliminate those steps. There is where you're going to find innovation and a way to help people save money or time.
But, more importantly than these books, start making something this week that will help you. Take one of those ideas and figure out the quickest thing that will possibly help you or your customer. I recommend starting with yourself as the customer. It's so much easier.
Start with a spreadsheet or Wufoo form if you have to. Once you have the smallest thing that actually makes your life easier, now go try and sell it. Try and sell it to your friends. Email some people. Take out a Facebook/Google ad. Start teaching people on a blog and forming an audience. Get them to try and buy your thing.
I've been building Ruby on Rails applications for over 7 years. I'm very good with it. But I'll still try and start a new business by taking the smallest step possible. I'll start by selling a manual service before I build stuff, because the process helps me learn so much.
Before Draft, I was trying to see if I could create a tool to help people collect Beta users better. But instead of selling a tool, I sold a service: "Let me collect Beta users for you." And I sent people to a Wufoo form to pay me and add their info. And I got sales. With those initial customers I figured out what works and doesn't work when trying to get Beta users. And that data led me figure out I didn't want to be in the business after all. And I moved onto another project.
You need data about your ideas as fast as you can get it, so you don't waste your life on the junk.
Seriously. Between that and an earlier marketing simulation game I fell in love with the idea of the Blue Ocean Strategy which halfway through the BSG semester I discovered was also a book. A decent book, btw.
That's a concept I've taken to heart. So much of the business world is full of bull-headed assholes who think they can all out-compete each other and refuse to take the secondary, niche path to success. All the better for me, though.