Suddenly, factory-driven strategies make no sense at all. Other than your brand and your relationships with customers, your only asset may be the smart people who work in your office. And those smart people are totally and completely able to adjust to a fundamentally different kind of business within a week. Let me prove it with a simple thought experiment. Biz-dev people know how to biz dev.
Salespeople know how to sell.
Period, as Tom Peters would say. Let's say, for example, that you've got a team of 40 smart people working in a venture-backed startup. Uh, wrong answer. Shut down the laundromat, fire your two employees who have nothing but laundry-specific knowledge, keep the rest of the smart folks, and start over. There's a huge imperative to grow, especially among public companies, but it's pretty obvious that a company is not going to see rapid growth by introducing yet another laundry detergent or yet another soft-drink flavor.