The Search For Innovation is Slowing Your Success

Building a new flywheel doesn’t make the existing flywheel spin any faster

For almost two decades I worked with teams to help them innovate. Startups and large incumbents paid us to find breakthrough ideas that would catapult them into success.

Yet, almost every workshop or design sprint revealed the same conclusion:

Don’t do the wild new thing you imagine you need, instead get the basics right and deliver on expectations.

Innovation is useful in the context of invention. Inventing things can be helpful. A new vaccine or a fossil-fuel free energy source is useful. The problem with inventions is that the people that invent things don’t often see the rewards.

If I invented the basketball and patented my invention there’s a good chance I’d be enjoying the royalties from that work. But let’s be honest, do you even know who invented the basketball? No you don’t because they are not the ones who benefitted from the invention.

The people that benefited from the invention of the basketball are the top tier players that play the game.

The point is, it’s not necessary to be the inventor. If you want to build a business you don’t need to innovate, you need to apply that idea to a problem in the market.

Microsoft didn’t invent the PC O/S. Google didn’t invent search. Tesla didn’t invent the electric car. They built a business around those ideas.

Applying that idea to a market and then creating a flywheel that generates momentum is what Jim Collin’s research has proven to work. What slows the flywheel down is when we stop pushing it and start building a new flywheel.

When done right, innovation is invisible. Innovation is the behind-the-scenes stuff that delivers on the brand promise.

- I don’t need you to come up with a new loyalty points system, I need the plane to leave on time.

- I don’t need you to invent a new AI-powered-crypto-secured-chatbot, I need the product to do what it says it will do.

- I don’t need some new pretentious dish served each week, I need a consistent meal served with care.

- I don’t need you to announce your multi-million dollar logo redesign, I just need the app to work.

Recently, I was flying back from London on Virgin Atlantic. The ground crew and flight crew were amazing, as always. I’ve flown with Virgin hundreds of times and never had a bad experience. Why? They are consistently interested in making my experience comfortable.

And being comfortable on a 7 hour flight is what I’m paying for.

I’m not paying for the technology or the business model. I’m paying to feel welcomed, cared for and valued.

They don’t have the best website, or the best app, but they do have the best lounges and crew. Nothing innovative. Just care and attention to detail.

When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, they handle the situation with grace and humor. At one point on the flight I noticed the wifi wasn’t working. I asked the flight attendant if they could fix it. Unfortunately it was something that was beyond their technical abilities. So instead they did the one thing they could control, gifted me a lovely bottle of wine and a offered me an upgrade.

It’s been like that for decades. I’m a loyal customer because they always meet or exceed expectations. That’s the innovation.

You’re not selling innovations, you’re selling expectations.

Set them and meet them. Stop trying to innovate.