Adaptation and Change

Adaptation and change are important to the survival of any business and hugely important for startups trying to find their market.   In an excellent post by Dharmesh Shah, he discusses five ways to commit “startup suicide.”  One of the ways to commit startup suicide is “Death by Determination” which occurs because of an unwillingness to change or adapt.  Shah states:

“I should have called this ‘Death by Stubbornness’, but I like the alliteration and ‘death by determination’ just sounds interesting because we always think of being ‘determined’ as a good thing.  To clarify, what I mean here is when you are determined to make your original idea a success.  You read somewhere that lots of startups die because they give up on their idea too soon and you’re not going to have that happen to you.  Come hell or high water you will see this idea through!  Here’s an insider tip:  Most successful startups end up doing something that is different from their original idea.  Dogged determinedness will likely keep you from building the business that you could have built.  Yes, you can’t just drop every idea that comes along at the first sign of conflict or controversy.  It’s a very thin line (nobody said startups were easy).”

Another good article about change and adaptation  is “Startups Start Over” in Wired magazine that discusses the transformation Riya, Odeo and Pluck in effort to refine their businesses before running out of seed money.  Andy Sack, Judy’s Book founder, has been discussing changes at Judy’s Book in a series of posts on his blog site (I think it’s really cool that a founder and CEO is so open).

Lastly, Tim Wolters has a post about Helen Grenier and iRobot.  He tells the story of the evolution of the roomba vacuum cleaner.  It’s a great anecdote about adaptation and change that led to a very successful product.

Comments

[Lal]

If u're stuck on your origonal business plan and not prepared to change ... be prepared to die...
as in startup failure.

Most of the startups failings I see (from those I 'advise') are those that fail 2 listen.

Lal