If The Game Isn’t Working For You, Change The Game
Robert A. Heinlein is recognized by many as the grandmaster of science fiction. And while his writings are entertaining, as well as very well-written, it’s important to note that he was also quite the occultist. The man had ties with Jack Parsons, who, if you were unaware, was cuckolded by L. Ron Hubbard before he was “blown up” in Pasadena, California.
Now Heinlein had a kind of worldly wisdom and was venerated in his area of expertise: fiction. One thing that he said in his books was: “Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you. If you don’t bet, you can’t win.” Well, that’s definitely a considerable sentiment. But have you considered that changing the game may represent an even better strategy?
If you disruptively innovate throughout the market, suddenly instead of the house having an advantage over you, you’ve got an advantage over the house. In a casino, the game is rigged against you—so rig it back against them! If you don’t get caught, you’ve got a morally, ethically legitimate win. Cheating a cheater zeroes out the offense. Well, in the opinion of some—including a Christian church.
They learned a method of counting cards so effective that they were able to take casinos for millions of dollars over the course of five years. Their method of counting cards is a method of disruptive innovation, by which they gave themselves a legal advantage over the “house” which allowed them to secure millions in funding, and over other religious bodies who didn’t have that strategy in play.
Applying These Lessons
You can do the same thing with your business, large or small: you can learn to innovatively disrupt the market in your favor. One of the most popular, and still exploitable, ways this is done today is through outsourcing your office.
It works like this: instead of using traditional on-site server arrays to process and store information, you outsource as much of your internal technology as possible to technological innovations like the cloud and institute a BYOD campaign. If you’re unfamiliar, BYOD refers to Bring Your Own Device. Basically, with a network accessible remotely, employees work from wherever it is convenient for them to do so. Solutions like BYOD may be abbreviated by the phrase infrastructural consolidation.
The only thing employees using such BYOD solutions will need access credentials and a secure internet connection. With these things, they can then work from wherever they’d like. Ultimately, this ends up making them more productive. Also, your business saves money in terms of rent, as well as equipment—you don’t have to buy them a computer if they just use their own.
You can run a 100+ man operation from a non-specific location with a group of several. This is the model WikiLeaks began using around ten years ago, and look at the impact they’ve had on the market. Certainly, WikiLeaks did this a little bit differently; but essentially it’s the same modus operandi: remote workers contributing to a whole cause.
Overcoming Operational Difficulties
The difficulty comes in keeping time. You’ll need to establish some paradigm of clocking in and out which is secure. Solutions like Clockspot allow businesses to track employee time from anywhere. This is a cloud-based app which will definitely save you time and money if you properly employ it.
When you can cut out equipment and rental costs successfully while increasing productivity among employees—as well as satisfaction—you, ’re likely to save tens of thousands a year, if not on a monthly basis. Such savings will allow you to more effectively innovate, research, develop, market, and grow; outpacing your competition. This is a disruptive innovation, and following through on a disruptively innovative campaign like this can really be profitable.