I will be the first to admit that the contents of this article are not new, nor is it original. It is, however, something that has worked well for me over the years and I wanted to share it with as many people as possible. Jack Ma said, “Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.” This is something that we at Aizatron are passionate about it drives us to help as many budding innovators as possible. 

Being an innovator is not easy and successful innovators are people who defy the odds to produce something new to the world. Innovators see the world as it should be and not as it is, and they take responsibility to make it as it should be. They are a special breed of people who actually create new wealth in society and do not merely distribute or cycle it.  They create new markets, drive employment, build new industries, etc. driving economies forward. Societies that are able to produce true innovators will become very successful in the future. 

For the purposes of this article, we will define a successful innovator as someone who has delivered a successful innovative product to the market resulting in a user base for the product. In other words, building the product for the real world and creating a user base that actively uses it.  

Imagination

John Muir said that “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” As humans we are born with this capability to imagine both problems and solutions. We all are able to imagine the most elaborate solutions to world problems. We discuss this in social gatherings, at work, etc. Yet, majority of us leave it there – just as an idea. Sometimes an Innovator creates a product around that same idea and it becomes a huge success.  I have met countless of people in my career who told me about all the great ideas they had and someone else “beat” them to it. 

True innovators imagine a solution, create an end in mind, and begin the steps to make this a reality. They believe so strongly in their ideas that they begin putting resources into developing it further. They begin by researching everything they can about the solution they want to create.  They do not let it go.

Seek Knowledge

“The pursuit of knowledge is never ending the day you stop seeking knowledge is the day you stop growing”- Brandon Travis Ciaccio.

This is where the majority budding innovators drop out of the innovation cycle. Many people find that someone else has already thought of the idea or that it will be too complex to do. Innovators research things and they learn from other people. If someone else has already though of the idea, innovators try to understand how their systems work, how can it be improved and how different the end product was from their original idea.

Innovators understand that taking an idea and building it into something real is hard work and generally very complicated. This is where they begin researching everything they can about what they want to build. They connect with like-minded people via meet ups, online forums, conferences or at work, school or socials, constantly gathering as much information as possible around their idea or concept. 

Every great innovator has built their solutions on work done by predecessors.  It is more than likely, innovators will find that someone else has done something similar, and they will begin to refine their idea and find the critical gaps in existing solutions.  This is where the original idea evolves into something more real that could be productised.  Establishing partnerships is a great way to set up relationships to co-create and share knowledge toward producing an end product. 

Plan for Everything

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Planning is vital to achieving any goal. There will be many road blocks and problems that will arise. Good planning and organization skills helps overcome these hurdles. The building of an innovative product is not a linear process nor is it a neat cyclic process - It is a process that is all over the place.  There are many failures that innovators will experience and many nights they go home very depressed. It is very normal to experience manic-depression stages – sometimes multiple times a day. Understanding how to get past the failures is critical therefore planning for failures is more important than planning for success. 

Having contingency plans on top of contingency plans for addressing failures is critical to success. Planning is vital to ensure that the end of this chaotic process, an innovative product is produced. 

Design Well

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs. 

The solution must be easy to use where anyone can pick it up and begin using it.  Spending time and effort on design is critical to the success of any product. The product must look good and work, as expected. A common mistake that innovators make is that they race to take a product to market and fail to deal with design flaws. One of the best ways to build robust solutions is to do rapid prototyping and field testing. The faster innovators are able to design, build, test, measure, redesign, build, test- driving a continual improvement cycle the more enhanced the end-product will be. Having actual end users is a great way to build robust products where the product can be placed into the field to test it in real world situations. This feedback is a great way to improve the design of the product. At Aizatron, we always try to find end users to work with in order to test our products in the field before we commercialise. 

Persevere 

“If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure” – Jack Ma. Perseverance is the hardest part of being an innovator. There is no shortage of colleagues, friends and family telling innovators that their ideas are great, however, they are wasting time, money and resources. They really feel like they are helping, however innovators in spite of all of this the criticism still persevere.  Innovators are obsessively optimistic and have a drive to succeed -even against very tough odds. 

There will be many failures that they experience and often will want to quit. Money also is very tight when innovating as it is a very expensive process. The spend becomes very difficult to justify. The project will consume valuable time and energy and balancing revenue generating activities with innovation activities becomes difficult to motivate. 

 Even after all of this, a likely outcome could result in the product failing, but an Innovator never gives up. They learn from that failures and begin working on the next big idea. This time they will be much smarter than before. They will continue try until they succeed. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, Innovators see the world as it should be, and they will continue to build innovative solutions to make it that way. They never give up. 

A Final Word

In conclusion, should you wish to chat to us about assisting or support you as a budding  innovator or you are struggling  build an innovative unit or create a culture of innovation in a large corporate,  please contact us via our website www.aizatron.com. Finally, I would like to leave you with the words of one of the greatest innovators of our time - Steve Jobs.

“Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” 

Ansu Sooful

CEO – Aizatron Group