Are you in a Dying Field, Growing Field or a New Field?

Ride the Wave! With ongoing shifts in the marketplace due to global disruptions, everyone should be asking themselves if they are in a dying, growing or new field/sector. This would ensure that each person is taking personal responsibility with where they may end up say 2, 5 or 10 years from now. Depending on how you answer that question should also determine what types of personal or career development plans you'll need to have in place.

• If you are in a dying field, it may be wise to initiate a shift for yourself since the world may have decided that they no longer perceive your sector as relevant to them in the future. The sector may not be able to carry your own financial needs as time goes on.
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• If you are in a growing field your need is to standout and showcase yourself as best in class in order to ride the "wave of growth". As demand increases you will only benefit if people can find you and can trust you as the expert in your field.
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• If you are in the space that is new and innovating, like I am, you will need to be strategic because there are up and down sides.... Let me explain - so let us say that you were a Dentist, you get to benefit from all the years of marketing that your profession invested into educating people on why they need to invest in dental hygiene. In short you will not need to spend too much time and money telling people how you can help them or why they need to brush their teeth. You already know that people are already searching "Dentists near me" so you only need to open your office and sit and wait and people will come to you. Innovative sectors do not work that way because you are trying to sell a solution to a problem that people do not know that they have yet. Innovative solutions require patience, marketing ingenuity and sometimes external forces to accelerate adoption. This is why building for the future while solving for today is a strategy that many apply including blitz scaling strategies.
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• If you are in a new field you will need to invest significant time educating your "would be clients and customers" why they need you and how their lives would be better as a result of your solutions. To assist those launching a new product or service I developed a framework that you can download for free here: www.toyinumesiri.com/launchnow
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• 25 years ago, if someone had asked you to engage in business with China you would have been skeptical. Today it is now a saturated space. When I resigned from working at the corporate headquarters of Fortune #1; Walmart, to pursue advancing business, trade and investment with Africa - it was seen as a radical move and I have learnt so much from that journey on entrepreneurship, innovation, global economic transformation, policy advocacy and so much more about commercialization of ideas and natural resources. Some of my conclusion on accelerating adoption of new ideas are:
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• Create communities around your idea and invite other experts to share their knowledge of the new space (I host Business Summits with the biggest global thinkers in my space)
• Invest in creating your own platforms or pay to be on someone else's (I run platforms I own and I also speak at many others)
• Tell your story in meaningful ways and educate your community (...you are reading my story now :) ) ------
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• Toyin Umesiri served as strategist to executives at Walmart. She is the founder of Nazaru and Business, Trade and Investment Platforms. She connects, empowers and educates Business and Government stakeholders and helps them achieve their commercial goals through her consulting and coaching practice. Learn more at www.toyinumesiri.com | email: info@toyinumesiri.com