One of the first concepts I learned in design school was the importance of negative space. In laymen's terms, the negative space is the area around an object that helps create the composition, as well as, gives direction to the viewer's eyes.
You might be wondering, what does this have to do with my small business? Well, as we've talked about in the last few weeks on the LittleEngine blog, your small business needs to be different, REALLY DIFFERENT, in order for it to succeed is the clutt...
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One of the first concepts I learned in design school was the importance of negative space. In laymen's terms, the negative space is the area around an object that helps create the composition, as well as, gives direction to the viewer's eyes.
You might be wondering, what does this have to do with my small business? Well, as we've talked about in the last few weeks on the LittleEngine blog, your small business needs to be different, REALLY DIFFERENT, in order for it to succeed is the cluttered world.
Furthermore, your small business needs to be number 1 in your own niched category, instead of fighting in a crowded, boring space. A crowded space looks like a grungy, black splotch on a piece of paper, with the clean, white area being the negative space.
It's quite hard to see this negative space, it requires research and determination, but you'll begin to see an outline of businesses solving the issues of modern-day problems. Most will overlap, some will be weak. Small business that don't solve a problem anymore or don't keep up with the demands of their customers, simply evaporate and a new company arises in the white space.
For example, Netflix, they realized the problems facing the casual movie-fan with the current movie rental industry: everybody hated late-fees, everybody was annoyed with driving to the rental store, and we wanted recommendations based on our own thoughts and feelings (and not the ill-informed clerk at Blockbuster). They put these ideas together with the current technology and launched their problem-solving small business, becoming a leader in their own category overnight.
Netflix discovered this white space by understanding the undeserved tribe, a problem a large group of people wanted solved, but none of their current competitors had the creativity to put the pieces together. Now Blockbuster and Wal-Mart are trying to catch up, however, it's futile now.
In closing, everyday a little piece of white space opens up for your small business industry/category. Are you actively looking for this space? Are you taking an hour to reflect and attack this space?
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