CHAPTER 4

Mindset on Pioneering and Innovation

Pioneering/Innovation—Discovering What Has Never Been Achieved Before and Succeeding at Making It Happen

Becoming an entrepreneur requires you to be on the cutting edge of your industry or you run the risk of becoming obsolete. Exploring and developing new ideas, concepts, products, services, technology, processes, systems, and, research and development should be ongoing. There’s no such thing as having “arrived” as a business owner, and thinking so would stifle the growth of your business. Remember American giants like Blockbuster, MCI, Borders, and TWA? Their inability to keep pace with changing technology and lack of innovation took them down.

Pioneering means taking risks to introduce to the marketplace a business concept, technology, product, service, or idea that was never seen before and blazing the trail for others to follow. Pioneers are pioneers because they study market trends and conduct research to anticipate what people want and need and develop solutions at the right time. The secret to staying on the cutting edge of innovation is the willingness to try new things and improve upon old ways of doing things—consistently. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. The electric car manufacturer Tesla is a pioneer of self-driving cars and is currently developing a prototype for flying cars that was only seen in the 1980s animated cartoon movie series, The Jetsons. Tesla’s founder Elon Musk, once said about innovation, “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

Businesses have evolved over time to keep pace with the changing demands of civilization. Depending on the changing supply, demand, and the standard of living, products and services evolve to cater to the changing needs of customers. The three ages of civilization are the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age, and the Information or Digital Age. Over time, the basic manual tools used in the Agrarian Age had evolved into mass-produced mechanical tools in the Industrial Age that then became the computer-based tools and systems in the Information or Digital Age we live in today. In this digital age, society is driven by technology and lives are dependent on it.

Regarding technology, the most innovative product of the twenty-first century that has revolutionized the way many people live today is the smartphone. It has changed how people across the globe communicate, manage their lives, entertain themselves, and become more productive professionally and personally. Prior to smartphones, we relied on a variety of devices to carry out different functions that we can now execute with just one smartphone. A smartphone can perform the functions of a multitude of devices, including the following:

• •Telephone
• •Calculator
• •Alarm clock
• •Wrist watch
• •Flashlight
• •Computer
• •Radio
• •GPS device
• •Camera
• •Compact mirror
• •Portable gaming system
• •Camcorder
• •Portable mp3 player
• •Printed books
• •E-book reader
• •Voice recorder
• •Scanner
• •Merchant/payment processors
• •VCR
• •DVD player
• •Timer
• •Photo album
• •Phone book
• •Webcam
• •TV remote controller, and more

The innovators behind the smartphone technologies obviously saw a trend that compelled them to adapt to the wants and needs of people. The smartphone is still evolving and will undoubtedly replace the dependency on even more devices than the ones listed previously. Many of the items on this list are now obsolete, while the others have experienced a significant drop in market share. Many more will probably become extinct within the next five years.

Cell phone technology relies on other inventions to accomplish all of these tasks, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, software programming, smartphone apps, and so on. Innovative minds, especially those who work in the technology industry, would be wise to take a serious look at creating systems and products that are dependent on smartphone technologies. The smartphones are here to stay, at least until its successor arrives.

Remember these companies: Kodak, Nokia, Xerox, Blockbuster, JCPenny, Blackberry, MySpace, Sears, Polaroid, Motorola, Borders, Palm, Pan Am, Circuit City, Netscape, Atari, Compaq, Hostess, and AOL? They are all now buried in the graveyard of obsolescence or on serious life support due to their failure to innovate. There are other old companies that are still thriving, but they have experienced shortcomings when attempting to invest in the next greatest idea. One example is Apple.

Apple fell short with its $600 QuickTake Camera which had the capacity to store up to only eight photos with a 0.3 megapixel quality. Apple also once tried to enter the gaming console market with the introduction of the Pippin in 1995. It was another huge flop with less than 100,000 units sold worldwide. Innovation does not always work, but it is better to fail at attempting to innovate than to not try at all. As it turned out, Apple survived, and is arguably one of the most renowned and technologically advanced brands today.

Did you know that ESPN, the sports media company, tried its hand in the mobile phone industry? In 2006, it failed to win over customers with its flip phone, which was intended to provide sports information to its cell phone subscribers. It proved to be a bad decision. Fast food giant McDonald’s is also not exempt from ingenuity going wrong. When you think of McDonald’s you think of hamburgers, right? Apparently, the rest of the world does also, as was proven when customers rejected McDonald’s’ Mighty Wings chicken. Both ESPN and McDonald’s are still in business and are undoubtedly still innovating.

There are other products that failed initially but served as a precursor for more successful ones. Although Microsoft’s ViewSonic Airpanel Smart Display tanked in 2003, it was a predecessor to the Microsoft Surface line tablets. Microsoft’s “smartphones” Kin One and Kin Two were discontinued in just six weeks after hitting the market. They could be considered as the forerunners to the Microsoft Windows smartphones of today. This is just further proof that the Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ innovative mindset continues to pervade throughout Microsoft’s organizational culture. (CB Insights)

Pioneering and innovation go hand-in-hand. If something does not yet exist, then it means that someone must create it. This is what pioneers do. Pioneers also blaze trails for others. They are not looking for conventional paths to tread. They are not necessarily without fear, but are never paralyzed by it.

Figure 4.1 Process of pioneering and innovation

Pioneers are willing to be on the front lines and lead the way for others—employees, customers, other stakeholders, and the marketplace. The great cost that accompanies pioneering entrepreneurs is that lots of mistakes are made by trial and error since there are no models to emulate. The upside is that they beat other companies to the marketplace by introducing their product or service first, and therefore, have no direct competitors initially. The advantage of not having to share the market with anyone allows them more time to perfect their product or service without any immediate threat from competitors.

I often tell my clients who find themselves struggling to set themselves apart in the marketplace to first discover what other similar companies are doing and then do it differently or better. While this might seem a bit counterintuitive at first, it’s actually the very thing that keeps companies on the cutting edge and ahead of the competition. While other companies are scrambling to be seen at the top of the heap in the marketplace, innovative companies veer off and start a new heap. Pioneers, by definition, don’t follow the crowd. They are ones who see opportunities before anyone else does, and by the time everyone else catches on, they are onto blazing new trails.

This is how an entrepreneur must think if the longevity of the organization is the goal. Rather than striving to stand out among the crowd, you must leave the crowd to stand on your own. Instead of creating a seat at the table, you must go and build your own table. I attribute a scarcity mindset to be an enemy to innovation. This type of thinking deceives people into believing that there is a short supply of customers in the world, when, in fact, there are approximately 7.2 billion people on this planet. You can create something that a group of people need somewhere in the world; it is an option that is always available if you aren’t too afraid to venture into new markets and other geographical regions. Even within your own country, there is probably plenty of new opportunities to explore.

Blazing trails for others is not a prerequisite to becoming a successful entrepreneur. It is, however, a better way of doing business in comparison to the alternative of avoiding risks and playing it safe. When I first started my coaching and consulting firm, I tried to do what most new business owners do—pattern my business after an existing successful consulting firm. That is not necessarily wrong, but using someone else’s blueprint for success will cause you to lose some of your authenticity, uniqueness, and ingenuity.

Emulating a successful company in the beginning stages your business should be like training wheels for a new bike rider. Once you figure out how to do it on your own, you no longer need the training wheels. It is the uniqueness of your brand and the problems that you solve (or needs that you meet) for your customers that make you appealing. You can learn a lot from what other brands are doing, like assessing the gaps that they leave open in the market for you to fill or finding areas of their business that you could improve upon. However, this will have limited usefulness if your target market is different than theirs. So, treat what you learn from other businesses as case studies and market research rather than as a blueprint.

Innovation is intentional. It’s very easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day operations of running a business that you forget to make time to plan and develop innovative strategies and activities. I’ve been in business long enough to recognize the ebbs and flows of my companies’ operations, so during a lull, I focus on planning and developing innovative services. I can then take necessary time to focus on incorporating new projects into long-term goals. There were some services I created several years before I ever launched them. Then at the right time, I introduced them to the market.

If you want to be innovative, study your industry. Become an expert in your field. Understand market trends and buying behaviors. Become adept at understanding external factors that either create opportunities or barriers for your business. Develop new products or services even if you don’t yet see a need for them. Stay fresh. In the words of Jeff Bezos, the brilliant founder and CEO of Amazon.com, “If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.” It’s no surprise that Amazon is the largest retailer on the Internet and has revolutionized the e-commerce industry.

Introducing something new into the marketplace that did not exist previously is what causes these two companies to the stand out from among the crowd. This type of innovation is also positioned to revolutionize the lives of its customers and their respective industries. Who could have ever imagined that?