Spotting emerging markets and developing your ability to respond

Emerging markets have less competition than established markets, but one needs to be creative and innovative. The main characteristic of an emerging market is that all bets are off because there is no track record associated with them. The next characteristic is that they can be risky since it is hard to tell whether or not a particular market will pay off. "Gee, I wish I'd bought Intel years ago" exemplifies the difficulty.

To be responsive to emerging markets, a person or company cannot rely entirely on established products or talents and will often need to do some research and development.

So how does a person fit the two together? Actually, it is a fairly simple matter.

Start by taking a look outside the mainstream at the people on the fringe. They might appear to be crazy. Flying Saucer Nuts, Religious Cults, Nerd Societies, Consumer Electronics Buffs, etc. From time to time a phenomenon my happen on the fringe that seems a little less crazy. Think of how personal computing emerged. In the late 70's a few curious tech-heads got their Apples and their Commodores and most people thought, "Interesting but useless." Now personal computers and email are the norm. More recently, ringtones and camera phones where what people said "Interesting but useless" about while others got rich.

So when you watch the fringe and see something interesting but useless, start to look where you might fit. You may have to adapt a skill set or undertake a bit of training. Within my personal experience, I adapted my extensive training in Zen and the martial arts towards tantra, and undertook to get the training to become a teacher. In a separate realm, I adapted my writing skills to the Search Engine Optimization market and undertook training in internet marketing.

What's great about emerging markets is that you don't have to be an expert, but you DO need to be willing to experiment and "fail fast, fail frequently." That is precisely how you discover for yourself knowledge that no one else has.

Next Installment: Profiting by your passion

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