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Why Innovation Matters
1162 days
With innovation and technology speeding faster than ever, it’s a tough target to keep up with. And if you can’t stay innovative, you can quickly be left behind. Find out the five innovation principles that will help jumpstart your inner creativity and deepen your pockets.
Every business dreams of leaving a legacy. These days, making it pass your first year is tough enough. Many forward thinkers have ideas that they hope could change the world, but hardly any will ever see their dreams come true. Hard work and focus is just the vehicle that might get you there, but innovation will be the gas that will keep your engine running.
Boston Consulting Group surveyed 1,060 executives and found some convincing facts about what are driving big businesses today. Innovation remains a top strategic precedence for many companies, with 72 percent of executives ranking it a top-three strategic priority. More than half of the execs were dissatisfied with returns on investments in innovation. Although blue-chip CEOs may be spending huge budgets on innovation, should not mean small businesses cannot compete with them. Small businesses can adapt and react quickly, and often don’t get toppled in the deadly process of killing innovation with “no change” attitudes from risk-averse shareholders.
Donald Sheelen, an innovation consultant, has created and managed over $1 billion worth of innovative products. “Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization.” Sheelan emphasizes that “without it, not only is their no growth, but, inevitably, a slow death.”
Only two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, and just 44 percent survive at least four years, according to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association. Here are some innovation principles that every entrepreneurs should consider if they don’t want to be another startup casualty.
Jump the next curve.
Great innovators are not trying to do things ten percent better; they are trying to do it ten times better. Innovation is the act of introducing something new. The power of the web means startups no longer have to build global infrastructure to reach a worldwide market. This allows for companies like Google, eBay, Facebook, and YouTube to scale their businesses unconventionally fast. They have jumped the next curve and invented new curves to jump on. They are reorganizing how society operates in brilliant and novel ways. It is their awareness of what’s upcoming that are allowing these young entrepreneurs to be worth billions.
So how can you start thinking like a great innovator? First off, you must be versed on what are the latest in innovation. The success elite are lifelong learners. Talk to your customer or potential market and ask what they want. Consumer-centric innovation may be the most powerful way to raise a company’s innovation success rate because you are producing exactly what your customer wants.
Get fresh eyes.
Most entrepreneurs never think outside the box because they are trapped under their own self-created glass ceiling. The busy daily grind with stress pollutes their natural creativity. Take the time to re-evaluate your goals with some fresh lens.
Start by switching roles. This is a good way to learn and understand what is out there or in there. If you are the manager, become an employee. If you are the product manager, become the product. Change your perspective. This bit of role playing will allow you to find new innovative ways to look at the same problem, and find a solution that you never thought existed before.
Stuck with a creative block? Try beginning your day with Starbucks in one hand and a pen in the other. Build a daily routine brainstorming new ideas first thing each morning to get your creative mojo going. Before the hectic day starts is when you are most creative and your mind is less cluttered and strained.
Swim in the blue ocean.
In the groundbreaking book, “Blue Ocean Strategy”, authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne say that a major focus should be on creating competitor-free market space. Unlike “red oceans,” which are well-explored and crowded, “blue oceans” represent “opportunity for highly profitable growth.”
For example, take Cirque du Soleil. They took an old circus model, which catered toward middle-class families, and created a phenomena focused entirely on the upper-class, Broadway audience. Cirque du Soleil eliminated the cotton candy and expensive, circus animals. Instead, they rented high-class venues and crafted a themed storyline underlining their astounding acrobats and performers. They were able to reconstruct the market boundaries for an aged circus industry and have sense entertained over 70 million people.
Start looking across time, alternative industries, or complementary products or services. Your goal is to find the customer values of today, then re-evaluate traditional, outdated models and their old values. Are you after a market that is small enough so that larger competitors are not already going after it, and big enough so that if you’re successful, you can reach critical mass and profitability with it? Once you’re on to something, you can start paddling in the open waters.
Think big. Start small.
If you are going to change the world, you cannot do it with boring products or services. In the “Art of the Start”, Guy Kawasaki suggest “your goal is to catalyze passion…the only result that should offend (and scare) you is lack of interest.” He also recommends you not doing it alone. Most successful companies are started and become successful with at least two “soulmates.”
Your positioning and messaging should be simple, elegant and deep. It must be easy enough that your grandma would understand, and intuitive enough for a fifth grader to figure out. If your business model cannot be described in less than ten words, start over until you can.
Move swiftly.
Busyness does not create a business. Don’t spend all your time trying to find the perfect business model and the perfect big idea. Marketing guru, Seth Godin, speaks of it in his book, “The Big Moo: Stop trying to be perfect, and start being remarkable.” Your goal isn’t for perfection initially. It just needs to be attractive to a large group of people.
Most businessmen would suggest that you must understand your market very well, understand your product very well, and then go as fast as you can. Make as many mistakes early on and react quickly. This will be your best way to be able to compete with the business giants.
The revolution of forward-thinking innovators has just started. The race to build creative, innovative companies will be decided who will choose to start and who will finish strong. Perhaps one day after all, more people will be leaving a legacy.
Fail to Succeed
0199 days
“I have not failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
Failure. Man’s biggest fear and what most try a lifelong journey to avoid. It’s not so much the event, but more so the sting and disgrace when it does happens. But who said temporary pain is always bad, in fact, what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger, or at least, that’s what they say. What most people do not realize is the bittersweet secret of failure may keep them from becoming truly successful. If it were not for failure, we would hardly see great success. Most people are not just lucky enough to get it right the first time.
With success books filling business best-seller lists, very little is ever mentioned about failure. I guess I could understand that failure does not make for glamorous conversational pieces.
With unemployment rates at an all-time high in the past few years, Corporate America is worried for their job. Sometimes it takes a closed door for people to finally get uncomfortable enough to take a chance.
Albert Einstein once said “you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.” Failure will wake you up to solve new problems by giving you a new level of thinking.
Why People Don’t Succeed
Fear is the strongest emotion of all. Most people will stay in their comfortable job dictated by the fear of failure. They might be sitting on the next big idea, however, their chance of failure, even if it was calculated risk, will keep them from making their dream become any glimpse of reality. The limiting belief of being failure-free not only keeps us from failing, it keeps us from succeeding.
Once we understand that we are totally responsible for our own actions or inactions, we can be motivated to take control. The biggest problem is that most people don’t take the time to define exactly what it is that you want. Fear is perpetuated time again when you’re unsure of what you really want. It’s easy to quit when you were never sure it was for you or not.
Napoleon once said, “he who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
Stay on Course
One of the greatest myths is that it takes only hard work to be successful. Before you jump out with the sharks, first figure out which pond you want to swim in. Perseverance is important, but bouncing back on the right track is even more important.
Our focus should be set in the right course that suits both our affinity and ability. Someone who is tone-deaf should not strive to be a professional singer no matter how passionate they might seem. Likewise, just because you have a special talent, without passion, you are quick to quit once the first major roadblock happens. Merge these coupling with right timing in the market and opportunity, whether given or created, and you found your sweet spot as an entrepreneur.
Virtually every goal is achievable once you start treating failure as a lesson learned instead of a dead end. Most people will end up quitting when they are just a few yards from the end zone without ever realizing how close they were. The most mentality of the most successful entrepreneurs is not if they will succeed, it is just a matter of how soon it will happen.
Lifelong Learners
Learning is cognitive and experimental. The school of hard knocks will teach you more about business than any business school can. When both are being done simultaneously, peak learning is taken place.
“Nobody strives to be a failure. At the same time, there’s no better education for an entrepreneur than failure,” says Nicholas Hall, serial entrepreneur and founder of Startupfailures.com.
Personal development guru, Anthony Robbins, suggest that the ability to act through personal power is the foundation of success. That is what separates the great from the good. They are able to take action because they have unlimited themselves from the fear of failure and pushed forward boldly and strategically. Robbins teaches the principle of ‘CANI’ (constant and never-ending improvement) for life and business as part of your path to success.
The fear of failure can be overcome by anyone who changes his or her way of thinking. Treating failure as a lesson learned, instead of mistakes to be quickly forgotten, will get you in the right mindset to get started and will be able to make you do things beyond your present ability. Failure is part of success; those who try to avoid failure will avoid success.
I know personally for me, I’ve failed many times over before I was able to get it right. I had the focus and mindset that I was never going to give up until I finally made it. And it was that sort of perseverance was what has made me successful.
Some Pretty Big Failures
Thomas Edison who is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S patents to his name. When he was a boy his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. When he set out on his own, he tried more than 9,000 experiments before he created the first successful light bulb.
Walter Disney was American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and animator. Disney started his own business from his home garage and his very first cartoon production went bankrupt. A newspaper editor ridiculed Walt Disney because he had no good ideas in film production during his first press conference. The Walt Disney Company now makes average revenue of $30 billion annually.
Henry Ford’s first two automobile companies failed. That did not stop him from incorporating Ford Motor Company and being the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the production of affordable automobiles in the world. His combination of mass production, high wages and low prices to consumers has initiated a management school known as “Fordism”. He became one of the three most famous and richest men in the world during his time.
Akio Morita, founder of giant electric household products, Sony Corporation, first product was an electric rice cooker, only sold 100 cookers because it burned rice rather than cooking. That didn’t stop him from trying. Today, Sony is generating $66 billion in revenue and ranked as the world’s 6th largest electronic and electrical company.