OnInnovation : Visionaries thinking out loud™

No. This is not a joke. This is not your usual “The Top 5 Steps For Innovation” blog post either. This is not a romantic story about innovation. What this article IS, is an urgent call for your attention to one of the fundamental keys you need to unleash innovation.

For too long you’ve been reading endless articles that promised to give you the recipe to build the next killer innovation. For too long you’ve listened to stories about how great innovators only needed a eureka moment to create their world changing innovation. For too long you’ve waited for your eureka moment to come. And for too long nothing happened. At least it’s not your fault. Besides how could you make an “A-HA” moment to happen? You’re just not inspired today. Maybe tomorrow will be THE day. Or the next day.

Well… now is the time for you to make a very important decision; Do you want to keep wanting or do you want to start doing something about it?

Take your time.

If you decided for the former then save your time and stop reading this! Seriously.

So, you decided to start doing something about it. Congratulations. You’re one step closer to becoming an innovator! As a gift, you’ll receive one of the fundamental keys you need to unleash innovation. It’s of utmost urgency that you receive it and understand it.

Key: There’s no recipe for innovation. There’s no magic behind it. There’s no romantic mythological muses that deliver inspiration.

Now that you have the key, here’s what you must understand to use it effectively.

#1: Inspiration & ideas are over-rated!

Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

Ask any successful business people. Do you think Donald Trump was sitting in his living room waiting to be inspired before becoming a multi-billion dollar success? Do you think that Steve Jobs was sitting beneath a tree when an apple hit him and led him to create the company responsible for innovations like the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone?

Inspiration is the Hollywoodesque answer to the question: how do you create a world changing innovation? Any blockbuster movie that portraits fantastic stories of success only show you glimpses of the HARD work that was done in order to succeed. This is the simple answer that you want to hear, because it validates your present attitude: “Let’s wait for inspiration to come. Then I’ll show the World what innovation is all about! Reward me now and then I’ll deliver it later.” It’s like the employee that says to his boss: “Chief, if you give me a 50% raise, I’ll work harder than anyone else. Reward me now and then I’ll deliver it later.”

It doesn’t work like that. Forget inspiration. If I waited for inspiration to write this article, it simply wouldn’t exist. You have to do what you do even when you don’t feel inspired. Even when you don’t want to.

Inspiration needs to find you working! That’s why it is so important to work on something that you’re passionate about. When you’re passionate about something is easier to build up energy and start working.

Transpiration is under-rated though it’s constantly present in the innovation process. From the market research stage, through the creative stage where ideas are born, exploration & experimentation, product development and all the way to shipping and marketing the product. This whole process involves a LOT of hard work to complete, let alone a success.

Inspiration and ideas aren’t the core of the innovation process. They’re only the initial spark.

You do NOT need an original idea to innovate! Google is famous for changing the World with it’s innovations. However Google started with a search engine. Was it a original idea? No, but it was an innovation in itself. Another example is Apple’s iPhone. In spite of not being an original idea (we had many smart phones available at the time), the iPhone changed the way we communicate and the way we interact with a smart phone.

Great innovations don’t create customer’s needs/desires. Great innovations start by listening and understanding customer’s needs/desires and then satisfying them in ways that they couldn’t imagine possible.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. – Henry Ford

#2: You don’t need to born with “a special gift”

It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.  ~Zig Ziglar

Many people think that successful innovators are born with a special gift. Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS magazine has interviewed many successful business people and innovators.

Here’s what he has to say about them: “every time I interview an extraordinary superachiever I walk away with the same realization. There really isn’t anything that extraordinary about them. What I mean is their answers to all the probing success questions are usually the same, simple and not extraordinary. What is extraordinary is that they actually DO the simple principles of success—relentlessly, passionately and consistently. And unfortunately that IS extraordinary.”

Notice the focus on the doing part. What differentiates a failure from a success is the willingness to keep going, keep doing the work that needs to be done to launch the next innovation and never EVER quit!

Having a special gift is something you can’t control. It’s another excuse to explain the fact that you haven’t launched any innovation. However, your attitude is something you CAN control. It’s a choice! You can choose to work hard to materialize your ideas or you can choose not to. That’s why the initial Zig Ziglar quote is so important and that’s also why you should never forget it.

Now, although you don’t need to born with “a special gift”, you must understand this: YOU were born with a special gift!

You’re the only person in the world that can use your ability. ~ Zig Ziglar

Think about that statement for a minute.

Do you realize the importance of your gift?

There is no single person in this world that can use your skills. That’s called competitive advantage. Only you can use your ability. The choice of using it is up to you. It will define both your attitude and the innovations that you’ll make.

#3: Escape The Ugly Duckling paradox

Now that you received your gift, you must escape, what I call The Ugly Duckling paradox.

Do you know The Ugly Duckling story? It’s a simple but powerful story of a homely little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse from his neighbors until, much to his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a graceful swan, the most beautiful bird of all.

The Ugly Duckling story perfectly portraits what happens to us since the moment that we’re born. First it’s our parents that teach us “Don’t do this or else… Say that or else…”. Then it’s the media turn “If you don’t wear this brand no one will talk to you. If don’t buy that car brand no girls will like you. If you don’t do that, you won’t succeed.” Time to school: “If you don’t like the same games that all the other kids like, no one will be your friend. If you don’t have good grades, you’ll die miserable and poor.” Then the job market: “If you don’t do what your boss says, you’ll fired. If you try to do a task in an improved way, your team will think that you’re trying to make them look bad.”

Then after years of brainwashing you start reading everywhere that you need to innovate to succeed. You need to think outside the box. You need to differentiate yourself from the competition. You need to think different. But how are you supposed to do all this when all that you’re trained to do is to comply and fit in?

The status quo has raised you to believe that you’re a duck because if you discovered that you’re a swan, the status quo would be in big trouble. Have you noticed that every time a new innovation changes the game the status quo starts screaming? Great innovations tend to polarize people but there’s no extraordinary innovation that doesn’t make the status quo quiet. In fact, a great way to discover if you’re launching a world changing innovation is to ask: “who am I upsetting?” If the answer is “no one”, then you’re not innovating. The status quo hates change and innovation loves change!

If you try to be all sorts of things to all people you will undermine what makes you different. When designing you’re next innovation don’t try to please everyone. Especially, don’t try to please the status quo. There’s more that enough people doing that and you’re not one of them.

#4: Balance yourself

You don’t need to do all this alone! Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack. Bill Gates and Paull Allen. Bill Hewlett and David Packard. This is a small sample of famous successful business partnerships that resulted in great innovations. One of the reasons that they were a success is because both business partners balanced one another. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas with people you trust and that complement you. In fact, try to choose a business partner that can balance you off.

If you’re a great Engineer, you need a great Marketeer. If you have both, you need an Operations person. If you’re the youthful visionary, you’ll need adult supervision.

~Guy Kawasaki

One of the top fears that people have about sharing ideas is the fear of someone stealing their great idea. However, if your idea is truly extraordinary, few people will like it, let alone want to steal it AND implement it.

Still worried about sharing your precious ideas? Here’s a small sample of comments made by famous people about truly great ideas:

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

~Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.

~ Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’

~Apple’s founder Steve Jobs tries to get Atari and HP interested in the Machintosh.

We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.

~Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Can you hear the status quo screaming? Just don’t expect it to love your idea when you’re about to change the World as we know it.

So, there’s no reason for you to not share your idea. In fact, it’s a great way to realize if you’re upsetting anybody. If everyone loves your idea, if it will be great for the employees, the employers, the customers, the investors and the whales… there’s probably something wrong about it or worse: you just created mediocrity. Of all things, be afraid to create mediocrity!

#5: Think beyond product innovation

Who said that for you to innovate you had to apply it to a product? Innovation is NOT all about the product! You can create great innovations that aren’t product based.

Every business related area can be a potential target for innovation. Some of this areas include:

• Process innovation: changing the processes that are used to run your business to make it more competitive.
• Market innovation: creating new markets to do business in. What better way to drive your competition crazy than to make them irrelevant? Warning: make sure that there’s someone interested in the new market that you’re creating.
• Business model innovation: this one is related with the previous item. One of the most famous business models innovation is the Freemium model: offer a base package for free and charge for additional features. Warning: don’t underestimate the power of cashflow. Companies don’t go bankrupt because of having no profit. They go bankrupt because they’ve run out of cash.
• Logistics innovation: logistic networks play a key role in today’s modern competitive business World. The way you manage the connections inside the logictics network can have a dramatic impact in your product competitiveness. Amazon and Dell are two great examples of logistics innovation.

Conclusion

The common theme in this article and one of the fundamental keys for innovation is hard work. It’s about having the courage to start doing something. It’s about focusing on action.

Want Innovation? Stop reading this, start exploring new ideas using your creativity while doing the hard work that needs to be done to unleash innovation and change the World!

-Bruno Coelho

Bruno Coelho is a Portuguese entrepreneur who loves Marketing, Innovation, Leadership, Customer Service and Entrepreneurship. Read more from him at http://bcoelho2000.blogspot.com” and find him on Twitter at @bcoelho2000