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Essays On Business

Innovation is a necessary ingredient for success

InnovationHave you ever experienced creative block? You need a good idea and you can’t seem to think of one? I used to run a small clothing company out of my house. I was doing everything from designing t-shirts to manning events and following up with sales. Then my creative juices stopped. I was having a really tough time coming up with new creative designs. My friend Jaron is chatting to me one day and says, “Why don’t you go out find clothing styles you like, and then ask yourself, ‘How can I make this even better?'”

That statement is in my top 10 top 5 best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard. It’s something that I apply to everything I do now. As Mason Cooley once wrote, “Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.” It is often the same with business.

The more I pursue business ventures, push my own mould, and develop our product offerings I see that incremental improvements lead to truly great innovations. From a business sense the best part of creating in this method is that the resulting product is tied directly to an existing marketplace demand. As most startups know, educating people about something completely new is one of the most challenging parts of generating user adoption. Whereas, when an innovation is an improvement of an existing product the education process is much easier.

Peter F. Drucker stated that, “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” Success in business, any business, depends on innovation. To maintain that innovation one needs to keep one foot in their business and one foot in the marketplace where real individuals are actually using the products.

But innovating a product is no guarantee of success, as Steve Jobs is quoted as saying “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” But is a necessary ingredient for success. As we say in my company, SimpleEngine media “Keep dreaming and creating.”

The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament. Steve Jobs

By Jonathan Whiting

I enjoy sharing what I am learning and hopefully it's of interest and help to you. I live in Canada with my wife. Follow me on Twitter.

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