Revenue Streams

Purchasing Context

People going to the dentist have learned to expect to see displays discreetly offering the electric tooth-cleaning systems the dentist recommends. People buying shoes can expect also to purchase on-site all manner of goods associated with foot-gear, including sometimes inner soles and other more medically related goods. Well-organized computer service firms have learned that they can use the service context of their specialization to sell software services, Web-page design, computers and peripherals, and training. Sometimes the entrepreneurial energy is very high indeed—so that Martha Stewart exploited her skills in catering into a publishing, television, product promotion, and endorsement empire all based on the rather extensive purchasing context of the homemaker.

Cluster of Skills

Virtually any well-developed professional or managerial skills offer opportunities to discover and tap into new streams of revenue—even those rarely imagined to have such leverage. But Richard Muhlback and David Buntin, writing for Journal of Property Management took on the seemingly mundane function of property management and showed the opportunities for consulting, legal support, public lecturing, and writing available for the creative property manager. But in the exploitation of personal skills, the most important innovation, as Anita Campbell pointed out, writing in Small Business Trends is to discover a way of selling one's work rather than one's time. Personal time is very limited and one's expertise must be multiplied in some way and sold over and over again. Publications multiply a message; and organizations can do the job too by means of training others to deliver a unique service. It is for this reason that new revenue streams require entrepreneurial "packaging" of skills in saleable quantities.

Technology

Technology is itself a powerful multiplier of personal skill—in its exploitation alone, much less in its modification and improvement. The sculptor who exploits chain saws rapidly to create ice sculptures for weddings is doing something very similar to the skilled writer who exploits the Internet, analytical skills, and statistical data to create books that reveal modern trends of interest either to specialist audiences or the public. One of the reasons why "new revenue stream" is such a common phrase in the mid-2000s is that computer technology and the communications systems that have proliferated like a primordial jungle all around it offer an enormous variety of opportunities for exploitation, both in technological extensions and in the use of it.

THE VITAL INGREDIENT

When, however, all is said and done, the vital ingredient in the creation of new revenue streams remains something perennial and ancient. It is individual creativeness coupled with enterprise. Revenue streams are created by people who are more than simply threatened by change or fascinated by the new. They must have their eyes open to see the opportunities and the discipline and skill to turn ideas and notions into actually saleable products or services. Not surprisingly, small business has been particularly active in the creation of the digital age. Virtually every big-name corporation in the field began as one or a pair of creative people. They saw, they acted, and they have in consequence created what amounts to much more than a stream. Call it a Mississippi, a Niagara Falls of revenue.

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