Most companies look to their right and to their left when considering what they need to do to stay innovative and ultimately more profitable than their competitors.
Their competition and their competitor’s products become the focal point of their innovation and business advancement. In high tech this is often a logical fallacy, a red herring, and the ultimate distraction for disruption.
Creating a new disruptive and innovative technology requires you to look outside the obvious technological realm and discover technological solutions for non-technological problems and/or challenges.
It’s an interesting dance and interplay between the innovator and entrepreneur and the customer and user as they collectively seek to create equilibrium. The “sale” is just a natural consequence of a satisfactory solution once discovered.
In rich online publishing media it’s increasingly difficult because the competition is endless and up-and-comers are more fresh and are using newer technologies. But new tech doesn’t necessarily guarantee innovation.
Your job is to look beyond the logical fallacies and red herrings and see the unseen, observe the unnatural, and leverage that which is not obvious. Typically this starts with you, your company, and your vision as it’s really the only thing that is distinctly unique.
This is a nice read! I really enjoyed the thoughts that you shared about looking outside the obvious technological realm. I was just speaking with a friend this weekend that did this exact idea and found a real problem and started working a real digital/technology solution.
I also really like the thought of new tech doesn’t necessarily guarantee innovation. This is true and more of us starting with myself must truly grasp and start living these thoughts out.
Thanks for the post,
Eric
Totally agree. I see this a lot. An executive will say they saw a competitor do this or that and want to implement it in their company. Then they blame you when it doesn’t see the results they were hoping for. Companies need to think strategically about their brand and what will work for them, not what the other guys are doing.
Forgot to post my name.
-Steven