Eveready’s change of tack must push firms to keep innovating

Eveready has stopped manufacturing batteries. The five-decade-old company says it will stop making the iconic Eveready battery locally and will instead import from its partner, Energizer Battery of Egypt.

The firm, which is listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, said it will develop properties, starting with its 20-acre prime land on Nakuru-Eldoret highway where the dry cell factory sits.

This is a classic case of changing business strategy.

Changing business strategies typically involves analysing your current practices and determining where and when adjustments are required. It involves examining the alternatives before taking any action to modify your strategic plan.

For Eveready, it was the influx of contraband dry cells and cheap imports that cut its market share and reduced its production capacity to 25 per cent, making it unprofitable to pursue local manufacturing.

When companies stop innovating, it can literally kill them.

Remember Kodak? What happened? Digital photography happened. The world and the technology surrounding how people take photos changed. Kodak didn’t.

And there are many other examples of big brands that faced the same fate.

Even forward-looking companies are sometimes blindsided by shifts in the marketplace. As businesses grow, staying nimble and adapting to change only gets harder and harder.

And when companies don’t have an entrepreneurial or innovative element, they start to slip into maintenance mode, which can be dangerous.

One way of staying ahead of the curve is to detect changes within your industry. Keep an eye out for the trends that may be signalling a change on the horizon. Keep notes of these trends and look for seemingly isolated facts that may “fit together” like the pieces of a puzzle.

When you think you have spotted a trend, investigate it further and ask yourself what other facts or ideas relate to it.

The ability to think ahead of the curve demands more than that you skim and skitter, scan and monitor. It also requires that you ponder what you read. It requires that you take the time to develop your own point of view based on our careful analysis of what you read.

If you begin to do this, you will have that rare and highly valued attribute known as vision.

Connect the dots

You must be willing to start from scratch and learn a new area. Figure out your “dots” and then find ways to connect your various skill sets to become a more powerful, multi-dimensional, unique person.

You must always be learning and looking outside the artificial boundaries that divide departments, professions, industries and cultures. You must learn to connect the disconnected.

To truly stay ahead of the curve, you must do better and be more thorough than everybody else. This usually means putting in more worthwhile effort than your competitors.

To accomplish this, you must set own standards, those that surpass the norm, find the need that isn’t being met and pursue it, do things better than everybody else and go the extra mile. Finally, do the new and unexpected and do it well.

Eveready joins other publicly listed firms such as Express Kenya and Sameer Africa, which have ventured into real estate to boost profits. What trends, emerging technologies and developments are you doing deep dives on to gain a knowledge edge?

Not a bad example from Eveready for all of us.