Physics defines inertia as “the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest.” For those who prefer it phrased differently, it is Newton’s second law of motion: objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Momentum, on the other hand, is a related concept that is summed up as the tendency to an object in motion to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force.
What do either of these basic physics concepts have to do with business? A lot more than most people would suspect.
Businesses – whether they’re dealing with renting out apartments or selling the greatest thing since sliced bread – are kind of like objects. When there’s nothing pushing them forward, they’re liable to stay “at rest.” On the other hand, when it is moving forward at a decent pace and there’s no “external force” acting upon it to stop, then it increases the likelihood it’ll keep that linear forward motion going. Now, with that in mind, there are some things to bear in mind.
It is harder to ride out momentum than it is to overcome inertia. As stated in the laws of physics, things that aren’t moving tend to keep at it. It isn’t that the businessman is lazy or incompetent, though. A lot of the time, the problem is external in nature. Maybe it’s the wrong season for the product. Maybe the market it once catered to is slowly dying off. Maybe the economic crunch is starting to really wear down on the chances of someone getting anything going.
Whatever the reason, something has effectively forced a business to stop, which is disaster in the making. Inertia is tough because something external made the revenues stop coming in, and waiting for the willpower or the outside influence to get momentum going again can drain a new enterprise dry.
On the other hand, momentum isn’t everything. The dot-com bubble of the 90s, before the bubble burst, had a lot of momentum going for it. Stocks were rising in price at a ridiculous rate. Only the most cautious of investors chose not to take the dip.
Yet, when it was revealed that not only did most of those sites not have the fundamentals of business but that some of them had no intention at all of making a profit or generating revenue, all the momentum in the world couldn’t save the market from crashing. As impressive as the forward motion of a company is, nothing is going to replace a solid business plan and good fundamentals.