Identifying the Next Big Thing - What it is and How to Find it

What makes the Next Big Thing, that sureshot guarantee for a strike-it-rich, so elusive for the new graduate?

The business world never seems to lose its appetite for the "Next Big Thing"™, the idea or technology that will revolutionise the way that we live our lives and make its owners rich in the process. But, with a long-term career to build, how does an ambitious new graduate spot the genuine NBT™ and the companies that will benefit from it among the host of predictions that fill the pages of newspapers and academic journals?

Despite all the hype, all the madness and all the resultant economic pain of the dotcom era, the internet did actually end up changing our lives, just not in the ways that many people thought it would. Making millions from selling pet food or cosmetics over the web never did turn into a reality (although how did anyone ever believe it would?) and newspapers and books have stubbornly refused to lie down and die, despite the claims that on-line equivalents would quickly consign them to the dustbin of history. Instead the internet has given us e-mail, access to seemingly unlimited information (and, ahem, pictures) and the ability to conduct business with customers from Birmingham to Boston to Bangalore. Along the way, a whole host of companies and consultancies have gone to the wall, while others have found ways to make money from the new business environment that's been created. So, if you are looking for a role in the next boom area, how do you make sure that you end up as one of the success stories and not one of the casualties?

The first step is to work out what the Next Big Thing™ is going to be and work it out at the right time. As Michael Mainelli, director of the consultancy Z/Yen, puts it, it may simply come down to a question of timing. I was propounding the internet as the next big thing, though sadly in the 70s and not the early 90s. One important characteristic of the NBT is that it must have the power to surprise at the time it starts to become big, but surprise only a little bit. Talk about quantum computing with most people today and their eyes glaze over much as most eyes glazed in the early  90s when you discussed a worldwide network. It's not whether you can see it coming; it's whether your neighbour doesn't, but only by a little bit. If you look around at technologies that are capturing the imagination at the moment, there is plenty to choose from.

Telecommunications have made huge leaps forward in the past two decades, anyone who remembers the first mobile phones and then looks at their modern day equivalent will testify to that but now face the challenge of trying to sell endless add-on services to an audience that seems pretty happy with just calling and texting. Nanotechnology is another credible NBT, offering the possibility of a completely new approach to engineering and in the longer term, the vision, straight out of a science-fiction film, of tiny nanobots curing disease by swimming through the bloodstream and zapping bugs and tumours from within the human body.

Yet, even before it really gets going, nanotechnology has attracted the attention of the doomsayers with some sceptics arguing that it could lead to the creation of selfreplicating nanomachines that could spread beyond scientists' control. In Japan, Sony has made an almost literal leap forward in robotics by creating the first running humanoid robot, while at the University of Aberystwyth back here in the UK, a team has announced the development of the first machine that can think for itself. Combine the two and the vision of Isaac Asimov's conscious robots or Philip K. Dick's replicant androids doesn't look quite so far away. Make your money quickly before they decide we are inefficient and surplus to requirements and decide to run the planet themselves!

It may simply be an idea

The NBT doesn't have to be limited to a technology, however, it may simply be an idea. Look at all those great management ideas that have kept consultancies and gurus in work for the last quarter of a century: total quality management, process re-engineering, activity-based costing, workforce empowerment, balanced scorecards and the like. According to an extensive corporate study by Barry Straw at the University of California at Berkeley, there is no evidence of an overall relationship between the adoption of ideas and business performance.

However, it could be that the fault really lies, not in the ideas themselves, but in the people who use them. As Thomas H. Davenport, a professor at Babson College in the USA, puts it, "There are no faddish ideas, only faddish managers and companies, who treat new business ideas as a panacea for all their problems." Some academics question whether the whole concept of NBT has gone too far and advocate a return to basic principles rather than chasing bandwagons. Thomas Davenport states that, "New business ideas can't substitute for the basics of management: hiring good people, using resources wisely and producing products and services of high quality that customers want."

And according to Eric Johnson, Professor of Operations Management at Tuck School of Business, "The next big thing" will really be the "next anti-big thing", the new normal. In my view it takes time to make things happen. Rather than going for quick capital, serial entrepreneurship and PowerPoint visions, the message should be "Go for it, but take the longer view". Success is no longer about crafting world changing ideas but about executing them every day. That means real products from real companies " products that you can touch and feel."

Source: QS TopMBA Career Guide