Where is The Market Going?

A recent tribute to Steve Jobs that was posted on the Apple website had a great quote from Wayne Gretzky – “I don’t go to where the puck is, I go to where the puck is going to be.”

This quote really resonated with me and with our team here at CoreSolutions, especially around planning/budgeting time for 2013. It is very easy to get caught up in day to day tasks and lose focus on our goals and where we, as a company, and the market are going. In an endless world of more tasks and lists we tend to lose the big picture and forget to ask why we are doing the task in the first place.

Keeping up with quickly changing tastes and interests can be a real challenge. Not to mention that we also have to remain flexible enough to steer our companies to where we think our market is going, or face the possibility of being left behind.

Flexibility is crucial (and may be the topic of a subsequent blog). Sometimes you may anticipate incorrectly. If this happens you may get caught looking out of place and will need to be flexible enough to make a correction.

We can spend a lot less energy and resources if we anticipate where our customers are trending. By stepping back and detaching from action, things can become clearer. The same is true of any task that we are trying to complete.

Start thinking six months to a year from now – where is the economy going? What will the job situation look like? How might technology change your industry? What threats and opportunities could be developing? Plan the best course of action for how your product, company, service, or you personally can evolve to navigate these changes.

This video might help you start thinking. It has some real gems including quotes like “The Top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004” and “we are currently preparing kids for jobs that don’t yet exist, with technology that hasn’t been invented, in order to solve problems that aren’t even problems yet.”