Innovation:
Swimming With And Against The Flow.

The car industry is already changing... Gasoline or Electric?

One of the most common reasons for not innovating is that leaders are afraid of change. I mean, who can blame them? Why risk the good for the better if the good will always be there. But we both know that good things eventually come to an end. And thus, the only way to stay ahead is to consistently try new things and evolve.

Cue the word we always hear: innovation. The bold embrace it and the ones that stay stagnant will choose the opposite: the status quo. But its never that simple. Its hard succeeding in being a leader in any industry because where success goes, failures lead before it. Who enjoys failing? Anyone that says they do are simply lying because you can only fail so much until you're out of resources. At one point you just have to accept that you have to try things, learn from mistakes, adapt and try again, before you run out of resources.

Why do we go where no man or woman has gone before?

To Minimize Risk

Evolution, simply put, is the change of allele frequency over time. Adaptation and proliferation within one's environment, as it changes, over a period of time, is how the game goes. In business, it means trying something until it works, become the best at it in your field and then try something else and hope that it will yield success. If you don't try, you'll always stay the same and your competitors can then out-price you and take your market share.

"Be ready for anything", was what my mentors told me when I had to leave my previous job and then created my own firm. I was lucky to have certain skill-sets that were needed elsewhere but was even luckier to have skill-sets that weren't. For example: skills in producing photos and film were useful but not during 2020. However, after years of working on cars as a hobby, having skills in problem solving in the automotive and engineering fields became of use for specific clients. Thus, its good to be well-rounded and its not a bad thing to have hobbies outside of work.

To Create Opportunities

Someone once said, to be lucky is to be prepared when opportunity strikes. In 2020, there was a surge in sales for sandals and slippers. At the same time, the luxury, tech, and home-improvement industry surged in sales as well. The vendors that had the goods soared and the ones that didn't had to sit on the sidelines and had to hope for the best. Being a specialist has its benefits, but a generalist stays above water when times get tough because they're ready to serve in multiple ways, rather than just being a one-trick pony.

Luck plays. That's as simple as it goes. Being a native of Las Vegas, I've grown to appreciate luck when it arises. But to be lucky, you have to be prepared.

To Be More Competitive

To stay ahead of the game you have to be ready to take on the unforeseeable. Sometimes having the right tools for the right job will help you finish the work in less time, but some times you just don't have them, and you need to put in the extra effort just to keep up.

Hard work almost always wins. At one point you figure out ways to use less energy and resources to produce the same amount of effort, but in the beginning, it may have taken everything. If hard work almost always wins, quitters usually lose, but the ones that don't try aren't even participating in the game. Don't be that guy or gal.

Innovating is hard and revolves around taking a lot of risks.

Remember the line from Finding Nemo, "just keep swimming"? Trying and keep experimenting is what innovation asks for. Sometimes, swimming with the current makes the most sense but when you can, practice swimming against it. The muscle that innovates and adapts is built overtime. Those overnight successes people read about usually take years to master. So try hard and fail often, but most of all, learn from each experience.