We can’t just ignore innovation…

Certain circumstances force innovation because it’s the only way to avoid stagnation or demise.

In his book ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ Intel CEO Andy Grove, calls these events or circumstances ‘strategic inflection points’.

Which are moments in any business when massive change occurs, brought on by market disruption or other forces outside of your control.

Usually, they’re caused by others being innovative (not usually a global pandemic) and have a positive or negative effect on you.

If it’s negative, Innovation is often the only way you can survive.

A good example is the internet, which forced many organisations to change their business models.

Another example is hyper markets selling everything 24/7 being built on the edge of towns.

Both these examples affected us, and we had to innovate. Changing our business model from retail stores to providing office technology solutions to business. We even wrote a book about it (available here).

Now we have a global pandemic requiring innovation. Like online systems, home deliveries, tech for home workers, monthly rolling agreements & affordable payment schemes.

Innovation provokes changes that must occur for us to move forward, especially for navigating around these strategic inflection points.

Innovation can be tricky though. But if you focus on 1 or 2 at a time until completed and don’t listen to those who say it won’t work. You’ll be just fine.

Oh! One last thing.

Don’t assume the experts are always right.

Tom Watson Jr (CEO of IBM) once said:

…there would probably never be a market for more than 5 computers in the entire world.