There are many definitions of what constitutes a business but for the purpose of this discourse a business is defined as the organized effort of individuals to produce and sell , for a profit , goods and services that satisfy customer needs .
The business or enterprise could be engaged in a commercial , industrial or professional activities but put simply the term business refers to the organized efforts of individuals to produce and sell goods and services for a profit .
So at the core of every business is the enterprise ’ s ability to create a customer , it is the function of marketing to create , maintain and grow the customer base . A great idea without a customer is a business dead in the water .
A customer is defined as a person or entity that is able and willing to pay for the product or service on offer and hence it follows that there is actually only one purpose of a business and that is to find or create a customer .
When a business succeeds it usually appears obvious and there is a tendency to overlook the fact that behind every successful business there was a person or persons that persistently and passionately promoted an idea that was once novel .
As we celebrate the businesses that succeed we ignore the vast graveyard of the many failed businesses and simply revert to clichés that remind us that out of every ten companies started seven will fail and since they are failures they are not documented unless they fail spectacularly .
Peter Drucker , whose seminal work in the practice of management we are using as a backdrop was first and foremost interested in finding out and determining what made a business successful and why there were so many failures even when the underlying fundamental ideas were good . and marketing and use that framework to determine the causes and consequences of business evolution .
We are not likely to ever know what impassioned ideal the Wright brothers were chasing when they took to the skies , it could be that they simply envied the birds and the freedom they seemed to enjoy hopping from one place to another or they just took on a dare .
The idea of humans flying was not a new idea since we do have an account in the Greek mythology of Icarus and his dad trying to escape Crete using a flying contraption made of feathers and wax . That flying experiment did not end well as the wax melted when they rose towards the sun .
Of course that was before science proved to the contrary that as you rise higher the colder it gets but that supposed failure served to warn many of the foolhardiness of trying to fly but apparently did not impress the Wright brothers and their ilk who were determined to defy gravity .
The first recorded flight by the Wright brothers was not even spectacular by normal standards since the bulky structure only managed to stay in flight for a mere twelve seconds over a stretch of only a hundred and twenty yards . That was the first witnessed flight of a plane .
But to the pioneering aviators the theory that a motor operated contraption , heavier than air could leave the ground had been proved and the race was on who would make this lofty dream come true and liberate the human race from being earthbound .
As human beings we get caught up with the razzmatazz of the successful lift off that we completely forget what was going on in the background that enabled flying to become the common place activity that we all take for granted presently .
As you can imagine the undertaking to get a human being aloft was costly apart from being dangerous and there are many undocumented failures and deaths that must have accompanied the development of a viable plane .
The innovation was breathtaking and audacious , all that was needed for the innovation to become a business was to find a customer who was willing to pay for innovation , and someone had to be able to see the practical benefit of flying to pay for it .
As it happened , the first customer for the plane was the army who immediately saw the benefit of raining death on their adversaries from the skies and through the government put in money to develop the plane as a weapon of war .
The military was quick to see the many advantages and the potential that planes would bring and the planes changed the way wars would be fought in the future . So important was the plane to the army that it eventually developed into a full-fledged military wing , the Air Force .
But other enterprising individuals saw the vast potential of flight and invested money in the commercial development of the plane . But this was not a cheap venture and in came marketing to the rescue of the visionary individuals that wanted to take advantage of flight .
Business oriented people put together proposals outlining the benefits to humanity that flying would bestow and they aggressively sold these benefits to convinced investors who were then willing to put up the money to develop these flight machines .
The magic of marketing is its ability to talk about what could be as opposed to what is and sell the concept so convincingly that people are willing to risk their money to finance a dream that is pitched as having
He suggested that because the purpose of a business is to create a customer then a business has only two basic functions : Marketing and Innovation . According to Drucker marketing and innovation produce results . Marketing is the distinguishing unique function of the business .
The aviation industry is renowned for its daring innovations and we shall use it as a case study to throw light on the symbiotic relationship between business
Within a century aviation was able to grow from flights of fancy to a real industry thanks in large part to marketing which was able to change the perception of flying as a dare devil pursuit originally reserved for those courting death to the safe , economical and modern way to travel .