Often, new businesses and startups find themselves deviating from their original business idea.
This deviation is normal. However, you need to be careful about how much the deviation is.
When you’re fine-tuning, scrubbing the edges, making your product or service compatible to better align with consumers and markets—you are in idea augmentation mode.
For example, if you’re in the business of online training programs for professionals to upgrade their programming skills, it’s okay to make adjustments. These might include simplifying language, adding country-specific language voice-overs, or building in more detailed or less detailed training programs depending on the audience.
Whereas, if you are deviating from the original idea to the point where it loses its specificity, you could be entering a dangerous phase. What might be seen as business amplification, could actually be an amplified contraction.
Carrying forward the previous example, you might be tempted to start training programs for beginners as well. However, the needs of amateur programmers are far different from those of experienced professionals.
You might be highly mistaken if you think this kind of diversification is business expansion (amplification)—it would actually be pseudo-amplification . . . leading to business contraction.
A business idea needs to be specific. Specific enough for a business to be talked about within a sizable audience, so that it can gain traction and momentum.
Side note: If your business has already captured a sizeable market share of one specific section, it then makes sense to go after another section of your industry vertical.
When an idea loses its specificity, it becomes generic. Generics don’t get attention anymore. If you make a generic product, you will have to compete on price for survival.
Survival on price point in the market is a race to the bottom. Your margins will die day after day, and at the end, there will be no business to run.
So, be careful: business idea augmentation is important and you must do it. But stay away from false business amplifications; avoid deviating from the original idea so much that you stop being specific.
For small and new businesses to succeed, being specific and visible is more important than becoming generic and losing identity.