Focus or pivot: A growth dilemma

Stay nimble and nurture the capability to diversify or even transform the business model to capitalise on new opportunities in the marketplace

Conventional wisdom would suggest that any organisation that starts in a competitive demand environment needs to have done its homework and chosen a product or service strategy that will stand the test of time. Even more important, the founder and the team need to stay focused on the vision and avoid any distractions that can make the company and its growth stray from the defined path. The story of Indian entrepreneurs in the past has often been a combination of building large corporations in an area where domestic demand was either growing or protected and using related and, in some cases, unrelated diversifications to created large conglomerates. The super success story of entrepreneurs in the eighties and nineties like Narayana Murthy also led one to believe that in an area where competitive advantage was defensible due to factors like global wage asymmetry and better process adherence like IT services, the path to success was fairly easy if one focused on serving all customer needs through astute marketing and excellent delivery.

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