by Ronald Manalastas

Created on: September 05, 2009

The business community radiates with numerous stories of small entrepreneurs having grown and prospered from ideas, products, and services that either were abandoned, left frozen, or relegated to tail-end importance by big corporations. Using vision and intuitive skills, these entrepreneurs excelled in sensing the demand potential and financial attractiveness of many rejected ideas. And by guts, focus, and creativity, they succeeded in building distinct values and commercializing these ideas to the point of sustained profitability.

An idea rejected by a big corporation can have good business rationale, and can perfectly work, with small entrepreneurs under any of the following situations:

1. The idea is outside of the big corporation's core business, but within the key competency of the small entrepreneur.

Most big corporations have reached a point of business supremacy due to intense focus on their core business. These progressive corporations wish to spend every ounce of internal strength to what the organization can best do for the customer. This core business mindset has led to the adoption outsourcing as a vital big business strategy that, in turn, benefitted small entrepreneurs with key competency or specialized knowledge to address big business needs.

For instance, a car maker is in the business of car design and assembly, and not in tire, headlight, or car accessory manufacture. Car industry history tells us that it is not operationally viable for any assembler to handle the integrated production of all component parts of a vehicle. It is for this reason that car makers outsource a lot of production needs (e.g. upholstery, stereo, air-con, glass tint, and rust-proofing service) to different small businesses.

2. The idea's revenue potential falls below the big corporation's business threshold, but satisfies the strategic goals of the small entrepreneur.

Big corporations can turn down an idea even it shows a clear potential to generate money. This happens when the amount of projected money from the idea falls short of the company's minimum revenue requirement. This big volume-big money business selection criterion finds classic example in the telecommunications industry. I remember a client's offer of service partnership being rejected by a carrier because the estimated annual project revenue of US$ 2 million was short of the US$ 20 million carrier's benchmark. This client pursued and cashed in on the project in the magnitude of his small

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