As the old saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
That’s what it means to “coalesce” – to unite into a whole, bringing together different parts.
It’s not just a fun word that rhymes with “success”. It’s a business approach that anyone can tap into. It’s weaving opportunity together, wherever it is and wherever we are.
The marketplace of old, that physical crossroads where merchants and the community intersected to exchange goods, has long since vanished. The marketplace now is at the edge. It’s where we are. And so is the community. So are the opportunities. Everything is at the edge. It’s nowhere. You don’t have to BE somewhere any more, if you don’t want. Or, if the somewhere part is important, you can bring what you need to the edge. – Chris Brogan
Examples of Coalescing to Success
Why has the iPhone been such an outstanding triumph? It coalesced a bunch of different applications and tools into one device.
Why are we addicted to Amazon? Although they started with one convenient service (on-line ordering of books), now they have coalesced everything from A to Z in a convenient shopping and delivery experience.
It’s even on the logo on their boxes. A (arrow) Z.
Both companies addressed an never-ending market problem: fragmentation.
On the smaller scale, business consultant Chris Brogan has developed a career out of exploring the coalescence of technology and business, and helping others understand and apply the principles that he himself is learning as he evolves.
Fragmentation presents an ever-evolving set of opportunities for success – if you can figure out how to intelligently coalesce.
Fragmentation presents an ever-evolving set of opportunities for success – if you can figure out how to intelligently coalesce.
I was recently providing career guidance to a gentleman who had three distinct areas of experience in his work history (launching and growing an entrepreneurial retail endeavor; sales with a digital component; creative production and management in video and music). What he saw was fragmentation and a zig-zag career track; what I saw (when the whole history was coalesced) was an ideal VP candidate for some growing company whose founder was becoming overwhelmed.
One of my Impactiviti training partner companies had a whole suite of digital tools that they’d developed over the years. On the surface, to them, it looked like a diffuse set of offerings. Coalesced with some integration and new verbal packaging, however, we re-framed it as a unified platform that solves one of the biggest market challenges – interface/integration overload due to multiple applications.
Clarity client One Trusted Advisor made coalescence its major marketing message – by bringing together financial/law/business/life advice under one roof, many of the inefficiencies and aggravations of using multiple disparate advisors is eliminated. Now, everything can be effectively choreographed through One Trusted Advisor.
Endless Opportunities to Succeed
Here’s the optimistic piece of all this: coalescence means that opportunity is perpetual and growing.
It’s easy to think that all the good ideas have already been had. Not even close. In fact, good ideas that can turn into business opportunities are essentially infinite – especially when you bring together different elements into a new whole.
Population keeps growing. Technology keeps progressing (exponentially). Barriers to connection and commerce keep shrinking. Information keeps expanding. This means new connections must always be made.
There always more edges, more niches, more pain points, more needs, more gaps and disconnects. There are always new job roles to address a fast-moving market. The only limit is our ability to recognize the endlessly-evolving pool of opportunities, and put together some way to match a solution to a pain point (or desire).
This doesn’t require a PhD. It requires common sense, situational awareness, curiosity, a bit of creativity, and persistence.
If you can’t create something brand new from scratch, you can always coalesce. Connect. Integrate. Unify. Streamline.
There are endless opportunities on the horizon. What can you coalesce?
Steve Woodruff, aka the King of Clarity, helps clients get clear on their business niche. With Clarity, you can see it, speak it, and seize it. Learn more about becoming a Clarity-based business here.
