ideasarehere

It’s important to constantly review your business in terms of what you are really doing. Once you lose track and start looking at your business from just one angle, you run the risk of missing the next step you need to take to stay in business. Basically, you can have one or more of the following roles: Buyer, Supplier or Catalyst.

As a Buyer, you do exactly that. Which is why most businesses aren’t Buyers, because even though they might need to buy commodities or services, they alter them and make them available to another Buyer.

Which could make you a Supplier. A Supplier is a source of a certain good, and (ideal for himself) the only source of this good, or service. Whenever someone is in need of this particular item, she addresses the Supplier in order to retrieve what is needed. This is classic industrial economy.

And now for the Catalyst. In chemistry, a catalyst is an element that makes a reaction happen quicker or more efficient, without being affected by it. Certain reactions even just need the catalyst as an ignition spark and then proceed by themselves. A lot of new businesses are like this, say Social Networking or Bookmarking Sites. When you go into business today, chances are quite high that your business is a Catalyst. The risk of this is that you may very quickly become redundant. Which is why you better keep a critical eye on whether you’re still needed, and how you can improve and evolve, because that’s the only two ways that will keep your business alive. You cannot rely on what you’re doing today will save your bacon tomorrow.