Slingshot Basics: being market-driving, instead of market-driven

n order to stay relevant in a fast and continuously changing environment, you need to be market-driving rather than market-driven. Market-driven, no matter how responsive, is a reactionary stance. In contrast, market-driving is proactive, creating space of lifestyle enrichment that did not exist before.

By nature of being market-driving, you are shaping and molding the lifestyle of consumers, which needs to be done in a way that is easily understood, accepted, and embraced by them. The seamless integration of each innovation into the life of consumers is your goal, as summarized poignantly by this quote from Virginia Postrel, a leading social trend commentator: “The most successful innovations are the ones that we stop noticing almost immediately”.

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