For years I have been irritated by the hand dryers in public restrooms.
About 80% of the time they were either incredibly slow, so you had to keep your hands under there for several minutes. Or the air jet was so weak that it was pointless even trying.
Usually, like most other people, I just reached for the paper towels instead.
Then recently everything changed.
Dyson, the company that revolutionised the vacuum cleaner business, decided to tackle the hand dryer market.
The result?
Well put it this way, if the other companies even stay in business they should count themselves lucky.
The new Dyson hand dryer dries your hand in just 12 seconds.
It creates a burst of air that travels at 400 miles per hour, removing any water on your hands almost instantly.
And it uses 80% less energy than a standard hand dryer.
But here’s my point.
The reason Dyson got into the market in the first place is they could see tremendous inefficiencies in that market.
So my question to you is this:
Is there a section of your industry that’s like the hand dryer business?
An area that has been hopelessly ineffective for years, with little or no innovation? That is just waiting to be transformed?
If you could just spot that area you could create a fortune as big as Dyson’s.
And if you can’t spot it, you are surely in danger of someone like Dyson coming in and decimating your company, with fresher, smarter thinking.
Now I know that you’re very busy with your day to day business, and you don’t have time to think much about what might happen around the corner.
But beware. We all need to remember that the threat of people like Dyson coming into our industry is very real.
We have to discipline ourselves to take time out and try to predict where our business is heading.
Before the Dysons of the world come in and do it for us.
