Most entrepreneurs I know are individually very innovative, but a successful startup can’t be a one-man show (for long). That means they need to build an innovative team, which is not a skill that most people are born with.
Today, consumers, distributors and even many seafood processors commonly lack basic information about the fisheries from which fish products originate. In general, they cannot know whether the fisheries are overfished or well-managed. They cannot even be assured that the fish were caught legally
According to a survey by the Thai Rice Foundation, the number of farmers continues to drop. And 90 per cent of farmer’s children—the future of Thai agriculture—said they would not carry on their forebear’s work in rice paddies.
About 81% of consumers receive advice from friends and family relating to a product purchase through a social networking site. And the majority — about 74 % — of consumers rely on social networks to guide their purchases.
The space for startups is more crowded than ever. First of all, it’s now international, so you have startups from every country in the world competing for your customer’s attention and their business. Then there is the Internet, delivered through every media, including your smart phone, where the volume of data spewing out is like a new Library of Congress every 15 minutes. According to a recent study done by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, there were 565,000 new businesses created per month in 2010 in the US alone, which is a 15-year high.
Adam Smith’s notion of the ‘invisible hand’ has guided multitudes of people to promote ends which were not parts of their original intention.
The importance of food and agriculture to Thailand is undisputable. About 40% of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood and it contributes to about 10% of GDP. The country is the world’s leading rice exporter and has successfully positioned itself as the “Kitchen of the World,” with the annual value of food exports expected to exceed 1 trillion baht in 2012.
If you are an entrepreneur starting a business for the first time, I recommend that you find a product concept that is already accepted and improve on it, rather than tackling that ultimate disruptive technology. Notice that I’m not suggesting that you steal someone else’s idea, but simply limit your risk by adding innovation to a proven entity. Evidence of success using this approach is all around us.
