Seeing trends and listening to customers can help your business evolve in ways that may be very different but potentially much more valuable. Here are a few great examples of companies that made radical adjustments from their founding. While this risk would often receive critique from the outside world, if the organization has a strong framework that also empowers flexibility, then magical things can happen.
Youtube
When it launched in 2005, Youtube had a different aim: dating. Yep, according to co-founder Steve Chen, it was designed as a way for people to upload videos of themselves talking about the partner of their dreams. He said, “We even had a slogan for it: Tune in, Hook up.” Despite offering to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to YouTube, nobody came forward, forcing Chen, Karim, and co-founder Chad Hurley to adopt a different strategy. The first video with this strategy was Karim filming elephants in a zoo, and the rest is history.
Lamborghini
Before creating supercars, Ferruccio Lamborghini first began building tractors in 1948. Ferruccio first made a tractor for his father, then his father’s friends, to use in post-war Italy. But as his designs evolved, it was cars that he wanted to focus on, and he built his first in the early 1960s. Interestingly, Lamborghini Trattori was so successful that the tractor company still exists today.
Playdoh
Play-Doh originally began as a wallpaper cleaner, created by failing Cincinnati soap company Kutol in 1956. The non-toxic, malleable clay-like compound helped Kutol survive another 20 years until the market saw a steep decline in wallpaper sales. Thanks to a family member taking it into the nursery where she worked to make Christmas decorations, the product was reimagined by its owners as a children’s toy. Initially sold as an off-white dough, Playdoh eventually reformulated into the infamous red, yellow and blue we see today. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Suzuki
Suzuki began in 1909 under the name Suzuki Loom Works, a manufacturer of weaving loom machines for Japan’s silk industry. Having created a machine that sold overseas, Michio Suzuki focused on looms for the next 30 years. It wasn’t until 1952 that it ventured into motorized vehicles, creating the Power Free 36cc bicycle and then the Suzulight automobile.
Nintendo
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a maker of handmade playing cards by Fusajiro Yamauchi in Japan’s former capital Kyoto. From 1963, when his grandson took over, the company experimented with new products and services in a variety of industries, including a taxi company, hotel chain, and even a TV network. Its ultimate future as a powerhouse in the video game industry came after the wildly successful Donkey Kong game in the early 1980s.
American Express
American Express was established as a faster competitor to the ‘slow’ American Postal Service, which delivered mail between the East and West Coast. It turns out that their best customers were banking institutions, so American Express established its money-ordering service in 1882.
The most legendary transformation in social media history was Odeo’s change into Twitter. Odeo began as a network where people could search and subscribe to podcasts, but when iTunes started taking over the podcast niche, the founders feared for the company’s future. So, Odeo gave its employees two weeks to come up with new ideas. They ultimately decided to make a drastic change, launching the status-updating micro-blogging platform conceived by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone.
Samsung
Samsung Sanghoe started as a small grocery store opened by Lee Byung-Chull in Taegu, Korea, in 1938. It exported dried fish, noodles, and vegetables to customers in China. After the Korean War, he expanded into textiles before investing in the petrochemical industry in the 1970s. Samsung’s first foray into electronics was in 1969 releasing a black and white television as its first flagship product