A myth that holds back many a business person and their business is the idea that he or she (or his or her company) produces one product, which we’ll call ‘Product X’, and that, therefore, is what their company is for.

Well, of course, many companies do just that.  They go on, year after year, producing this or that product or service, perhaps adding ‘Product Y’ to their range in due course, satisfying what they see as their purpose. 

But sometimes the demand for products X and Y dries up.  Rather like life on Earth, there are a million times as many extinct products, or species as there are extant, surviving ones.

Companies with sufficient foresight see the end coming, and evolve and adapt to create new products and services for the new environment.  Many companies are more like dinosaurs, though, and carry on in the old way, with obsolete products, because they served them well in the past.  Don’t get me wrong: those products were once brilliant ideas, but they’re not now…

Meanwhile, you may have a passion, a dream and boundless ambition, and you might have a wonderful new product that you know the world truly needs.  You may, but you’ll find it next to impossible to sell that product if it’s something no one actually wants.  So, instead of being a dinosaur, your company might simply be an evolutionary dead end… 

You can spend months or years and an unbelievable amount of money ‘educating the market’ to want what you feel they need.  Just as you can pour endless amounts of money down the drain trying to promote something that people used to want but no longer do.  Either way, you’re in serious danger of extinction.

Instead, listen to the market, ask your customers their opinion and watch for signs of what people actually want, not what they need or what you feel they should have.