People Watching

If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve never been ‘people watching’, then start up blog strongly recommends a session. For a lot of reasons it’s a cool thing all entrepreneurs should do. For one, all our revered entrepreneurs are champion trend spotters. And they spot these trends a long time before they are reported in the Sunday newspaper lift outs.

What’s next?

Go some where busy, go somewhere where there are zillions of transactions, go somewhere sans commerce, go where families hang out, go somewhere singles hangout, look for the subgroups, watch people looking at shelves in stores – guess their decision process, see if this process is the same for all or different for all, see what they wear, see how they move, how did they get there, where are they from, bring a notepad with you and write down ideas, go places you’ve never been before…. Watch people, guess their motivations, view their life in action and then we’ll be the ones gaining life experience…. Just go and watch.

shibuya-crowd

The funny thing about our world is that we are all in it every day, but very few of us are actually paying any attention to it. Step off the stage and become the director. Make it a habit to pay attention to what is going on in our world.

As entrepreneurs and marketers we are lucky. We can do our homework everywhere we go, and our start ups are the key beneficiaries.

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2 thoughts on “People Watching

  1. So true. Not an entrepreneur yet, but some years back I did spend a lot of time staring at the crowd from that particular starbucks window you can see in the image above. It’s relaxing (at least for me) and does give you a feeling of being outside the crowd. On some occasions, it can be even meditative. I got many ideas and a different perspective. I definitely recommend ‘people watching’!

  2. Great post. I’m by no means a start up guru, but after 6 months with my second online media start up, I’ve realize how easy it is to mingle who we are with who we think our users are/will be. There are definitely some unique types drawn to start ups http://www.culture11.com/article/36108?from=feature so it can be easy to do. Situational awareness.

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