Is your finish line moving?

There’s an old adage that suggests building a successful business is simply a matter of identifying a problem and solving it.

That might have been good advice in a world when the problems we’d face in the present were likely to be pretty close to the problems we’d faced in the past and would, in turn, face in the future. But we don’t really live in that sort of world anymore, do we?

Successful entrepreneurs today can’t just solve the problems of today. They have to be thinking about the problems of tomorrow. Or, as the team at Kellogg Insights at Northwestern University recently put it, “they have to have their sights set beyond the horizon — to markets that do not yet exist, to technologies that are still in a nascent stage, or to products that may need years of testing and development before they hit the market.”

In today’s world, starting a business (or growing one) is like running a race without knowing at the starting line where the finish line will actually be. Sprint out the gate, and you’re likely to tire out before you get to the end. Take the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach, though, and you may learn that the goal is a lot closer that you imagined — and get beaten to it. Clearly, the better someone is at predicting where the finish line is, the more races they’ll win.

That’s why any business seeking to bring a new technology to the market, or that is seeking to provide services through technology, can’t just settle for having tech expertise. To make truly valuable strategic decisions, business leaders need the support of tech visionaries — people who understand how the world is moving and thus how to meet the problems that will arrive tomorrow, even if those problems don’t exist today.

Is your technological finish line always moving? If not, you might need the help of someone who can help your organization run a more competitive race.