Repurposing Done Right

I’ve been ragging on people for some incredible business-related stupidity for the last few entries, so I thought it might be nice to cross over to the other side of the street for a minute and talk about somebody doing something correctly. A topic we’ve been hearing more and more about over the last few years is repurposing: using a firm’s resources to do something other than their original purpose, either because the new business model is more lucrative or because the original purpose is no longer part of a viable business model. Thus we’ve seen old factory buildings renovated for use as retail stores or restaurants; computer monitors recycled as fish tanks; hotels converted into condos, and dozens of other examples. But I don’t know where you’d find a better example than the company in Las Vegas that has repurposed a bunch of heavy construction machinery into a recreational venue…

According to a story in the Associated Press by way ofMSNBC, an entrepreneur in Nevada had rented an excavator to dig a large trench on his own property when he noticed how much fun he was having playing with the giant earth-mover. Quickly realizing that what he found entertaining might entertain other people, and that the state of Nevada had a lot of stalled construction sites to play in and a lot of heavy machinery sitting idle, he set up a company called “Dig This” which allows customers to play in what amount to a giant sandbox, using real construction equipment instead of Tonka trucks. Customers pay up to $750, for which they receive a ten-minute instructional period and are then allowed to operate whatever machines they want to. So far, business appears to be booming…

Now, I don’t want to suggest that every exercise in repurposing will be this easy, or this simple. Like a lot of the best ideas, this one is so simple that almost anyone would call it a stroke of genius, and most entrepreneurs will consider themselves likely to come up with one business concept this good in a busy career. I’m calling this story to your attention not so much to suggest that you go out and look for business opportunities that apply some resource to a purpose for which it was never intended so much as to encourage you to start thinking of resources in terms of what you can do with them. Because that’s one of the only ways you will ever gain an advantage on your competition…

If you study strategic management (not that I am for one moment suggesting that anybody ought to) you will discover that there are really only three kinds of strategy: you can do something better than the competition; you can do the same things for cheaper than the competition; or you can specialize on just part of the market and be better or cheaper than the competition – or sometimes both. In the Internet age, it’s generally best to assume that any asset you can purchase will also be purchased by your competition; that any technology you didn’t create yourself will also be acquired by your competition; even that information you gathered or discovered will be compiled by the competition, assuming they don’t just reverse-engineer your own operations and steal your approach outright. But even in this strange new world, it is still possible to take your various resources and set out in a new and hopefully unexpected direction with them…

Is there some new business venture available to your company? Some new purpose to which you could apply your firm’s assets? Maybe you should think about that…