You have probably already heard about incorporated or “Inc.” companies like Amazon, Meta, and Tesla, which are known as companies divided by shares, which enable the negotiation of securities depicting portions traded on the market without the need for a deed of ownership. Open the capital, is one of most better strategies to get investments for business growth.

Most of cases, the companies that turn incorporated, already have a great consolidation in the market, so, come with a great executives team, software, and structuring in each sector, mainly in the R&D (Research and development) department, which is responsible for gather data on the market, customers, technologies, innovation, and new trends, to make the business even more prominence in their niches.

So, based on data that was developed by great professionals and software, the Inc companies design the best path according to the analysis made.

And now, the big insight.

How those companies are inc and have open capital, by law, they are obligate to the income statement publicly the financial indicators, communicate what strategies worked well, provide an outlook about the market and announce the products and services that will be launch, this is entitled as Investor Relations.

This report to shareholders on the business plan, cash flow, and announcements happen through an event called Earnings Call, which commonly occurs in an interval yearly, semiannual, or quarterly and usually is presented by the CEO or CFO of the company. Now, know how you can collect good fruits from this event for your business.

Understanding that the analysis was made by great executives, who have the Skin in the game, who knows the branch, and have data that was gathered by the R&D department, you as a small or medium business owner can use their team’s resources and efforts to apply a lot of the same strategies that are presented publicly, inside of your business, following the most promising trends in the market.

Examples of big companies that followed trends

• Instagram

Maybe Instagram is the most famous case of the success of companies that reproduce competitors’ trends well, for example, in 2013 Snapchat became very popular with the verticals videos that lasted 24 hours, turning it a threat to Instagram in the world of social media..

Thus, did not take too long for Meta’s company to adapt to the success that was happing in the neighbor app, creating the Instagram Stories in the same format, and complementing the feed posts.

Recently, another content format that turned into a success was the TikTok videos, which have the characteristic of being shorts vertical videos, added with some edit resources (and this time, it doesn´t just last for 24 hours). As was to be expected, Instagram added the same model of videos to your social media, now entitled Reels.

Zoom out: The Alphabet’s company, Youtube, followed the same tendencies of the two previous formats as well.

• Tesla

Another example of a company that revolutionized a sector was Tesla, which we can call the Tesla phenomenon. An electric car company that turned into a reference for all traditional car brands, which followed the wave of sustainable cars.

Although the first electric car have been created in 1832, only in 2008 did the electric cars start to catch on with the public, and was Tesla a responsible company for this.

Nowadays, with Tesla’s success even more absolute, the old brands were inspired to create their electric cars, for example, BMW, Audi, Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen …

Applying the strategy

To make the concept more easily, let´s suppose that you have cloth e-commerce, according to this, you shall search for the big companies which have operations in the online market, for example, Amazon (AMZN), Louis Vuitton (LVMH), Nike (NKE), Walmart (WMT), and so forth.

Look on Google for the company´s code plus “Investor Relations“, you will find the company IR website, there you will see all the earnings calls from each period and what is the newest thing these companies are bringing to the market.

Following the example, looking for “WMT Investor Relations”, you can see that Walmart announced the launch of a new feature on their website when you shop for clothes online. The “Choose my model” option, supply an inclusive experience, enabling the customer to choose which model physically looks the most like you, providing the customer see how the clothes will actually look in their body.

That innovative online experience that Walmart launched, maybe is a great idea to eliminate one of the most frustrating things when you shop online, so turning a trend for other virtual stores.

But, how innovative is my business being?

A lot of people would say that you are not being genuinely innovative using that strategy, but the reality is that your company is a long way from simply copying a plan. Have you heard the saying “There’s nothing original under the sun”? 

You indeed can merely copy the steps of big sharks, however, the big innovative ideas currently actually are third-party pilot ideas enhancement as we gave an example earlier and there is still plenty of room for similar companies, how we can see Seamless, Uber Eats, GrubHub and other food deliveries companies.

The reality is that even if you are not innovative, you must follow the sector and consumers trends, unlike, your company has an expiration date.