Everyone seems to want to innovate. Every single person. Every single business person. Nobody really knows what it is, but everybody wants it.
Everyone wants to increase sales as long as they don’t have to do anything to increase sales.
Everyone wants to have a great brand as long as it’s not required to work on the brand.
Everyone wants to have nice and ‘creative’ designs as long as they don’t pay much for it.
Everyone wants to test and learn as long it’s failing fast without failure.
Everyone wants to be the person who did that amazing campaign or that new hack that was never an ad, but just a PR campaign.
Take a moment and think about this; are we celebrating the people who made the difference, the idea that moved needless or people who made perfect Press Releases?”
Innovation seems to be “not that important and easy to do”. We start with people for ideation, and solving problems, rather than playing with a shiny new toy. Let’s change our briefs from “we need to sell more” to “we need to communicate this and to help people xxxx”
Innovation is really hard.
Innovation is not a session, it can’t be shipped in, or outsourced for a sunny Friday. It’s a mindset, a culture. It’s people with passion who care and want to make a change. Innovation really happens by people that care so much they get fired in many places because they are not following the system. This type of people are pissing off a lot of people because they are going against their policies. Innovation is painful, deeply disturbing and massively disruptive. It’s an ugly process, messy, awkward. If it’s not making you feel a lot of things it’s not innovation.
Innovation is going beyond and risking everything, hiring a photographer without having a budget, it’s finding a model on Tinder or at the beach to make a point of a concept and not waiting for the client to talk about it, to plan it and to wait until 2018 budget. I’m just going to do it and send you a link.
Let’s be honest for a minute, do we want innovation or not? How bad do we want it? Do you want to show you were busy, show you are tired and just go through life busy? Or do you want to bring about change that you put your heart and soul into.
Look end of the day, there is a huge difference between saying we want something and actually doing it. If we really want something we will risk everything to innovate, to improve, to learn. If you run a retail store you can become the best at it by learning every day how to improve your customer experience, if you are a designer you can learn every day how to create better briefs, how to become the best at what you do, if you are a marketeer you can learn every day what great companies do, test new things, try new things, if you are growing a business you can study successful people’s patters and see what they are doing, push yourself to go beyond. Nobody knows your potential except yourself. You don’t need to tell you that you are great and you can achieve greatness because you are worth it, but you already knew that.
Innovation is sweaty, risky, terrifying and takes balls. So are you really up for it?
