The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest opportunities. Help a billion people, make a billion dollars.
This was a provocative challenge laid down by Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation and a successful serial entrepreneur, at a recent Strategic Coach workshop.
So why aren’t more of the world’s biggest problems being solved?
Ask Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach and he will note that most of us – and most companies – operate within the narrow range of our own status quo. We find a comfortable rhythm and lifestyle and just stay there. We become average.
Average is safe. By definition, it’s where most people are. But being average doesn’t solve big problems.
Real Opportunity Lies at the Borders
This leaves real opportunity for entrepreneurs and change agents. The business growth opportunities are at the edges of the status quo. In terms of S-curve business growth, the opportunities are in the transitions between one S-curve and the next S-curve. These are “border” regions where innovators and risk-takers experiment and challenge the status quo.
Like Columbus, those who leave the comfort of home and travel over the horizon often find new worlds of opportunity and growth. It’s over the horizon where new ways of “border” thinking are discovered and companies and individuals move to higher levels of growth.
Relationship Marketing at the Edge
One example of border opportunity is relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is a border set of processes, technologies and partnerships that can transform a marketing organization from status quo results to a higher level of engagement, interaction and profitability. It’s a mindset that fundamentally changes how a brand thinks about its customers.
Pharma marketing is right at the edge of this border. Crossing the line challenges the status quo. It’s seems scary, but in reality the current pharma marketing status quo – the way it’s always been done with traditional media, sales aids, product-focused messaging – is not sustainable.
Pharma’s biggest problems are pharma’s biggest opportunities.
It’s time to cross the border…