Let’s be honest: we just can’t wait for the big corporations to transition their model if we want to create a more sustainable economy and world. Even though we believe most of them can achieve the required transformation (and we are to help with our TRANSITION pillar as described in our previous article), we also know that some alternatives need to be found, known and used now. Simply because it’s sometimes easier and faster to invent from scratch than reinvent from an existing base.
From the get go, we wanted WDNR to be the force that helps positive impact entrepreneurs and companies to scale. All in all to hack the transition process, going 10x in achieving it by accelerating sustainable disruptors. With one clear end goal in mind: help create a sustainable and more sober economical system.
This is why we created our SCALE pillar. Some of the questions we ask ourselves:
- How do we help positive alternatives to become mainstream actors?
- How do we ensure that when scaling, these actors are not sacrificing positive impact to benefit revenue and profitability?
- How do we migrate a winning solution from one country to another? Even more making it work globally?
- How do we ensure they have the right brand foundations to go to another country or global?
- How do we propel these already existing solutions so that they scale up as fast as possible?
- How do we collaborate and connect them to come as end-to-end partners and not disconnected consultants?
With all these questions in mind, challenges that we gathered when discussing with all the positive impact companies we have the chance to collaborate with, we created, consolidated and refined our SCALE approach. Mostly structured around the core competencies you need to scale up, we mostly try to answer 3 key steps of the life of these companies:
1. EMERGE AND ACCELERATE
To become a well-known and legitimate alternative, most solutions need to get out of the niche/confidential zone. Having proven technology is not enough anymore. You need to scale it up.
This is when we bring our business competencies into the mix. With our brand expertise as the key foundation but then supporting go-to-market, marketing, sales and communication strategies and activations. This is how you put your solutions into more hands, being consumers, clients or even investors.
2. ANCHOR YOURSELF AS A MAINSTREAM SOLUTION
Ok you are now a legitimate alternative in your industry. What now? The biggest challenge and the biggest part of the job starts now.
Even unicorns are not always the go-to place in their own industries. So how does this happen? And how can we help ?
First, you need to conquer the market. By opening new countries. By deploying a well-trained and well-equipped team of sales. But also by exploring additional paths for your company through innovation.
Second, you need to build the right influence within your industry to become the main actor. Pre-empting territories, creating the right partnerships, being backed by the right investors, collaborating with the right instances… In this we help thanks to our ecosystem. We are connectors of impact. Thanks to our Pack, we can help you get the influence you need. And become the market leader you want to be.
Third, you need to keep gaining market share and brain space, turning an alternative accepted behaviour into a mainstream habit. Which means convincing the hardest audiences to get: conservatives and sceptics (remember the adoption curve?). That requires bigger investments to inject in higher funnel objectives (awareness and consideration, which are usually more expensive, both content wise and media wise). Or to inject in organisation structuration and expansion to function more efficiently. Or to inject in product/service rationalisation or improvements to make it even more accessible.
We do not have time to sit around. You are a positive solution that wants to become a major actor in its industry, do not hesitate to reach out. Or we probably will.
We don’t need roads. We do need positive solutions at scale
3. CONSOLIDATE AND DERISK.
Scaling up is something we used to do in our previous life. We know how scaling a business can be a source of negative impact along the way. So this time, we come at it by uniquely connecting business and impact. That’s how we can come as critical friends to analyse, challenge, strengthen and rationalise the product/service/business model of companies that are clearly offering a positive alternative but know that the way they operate and/or scale their operations is far from being perfectly positive.
- Is my product design with the most sustainable materials?
- Do I have a CSR strategy so that I operate holistically as a positive impact actor?
- Do I need to decarbonate the production journey leading behind my solution?
These are some questions hiding some potential red flags that we can address with activable or even deployed recommendations.
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Are you ready to become mainstream solutions of a sustainable world?
We do need positive solutions to become mainstream.
We do need positive solutions to hack the status quo.
We do need positive solutions to accelerate the positive transformation of our economy.
Written by Rija Goldscheider, co-founder WE DON’T NEED ROADS