Pioneers do not take short cuts to success
Innovation is not a commodity; it results from attitudes and the actions that flow from them, writes Katherine Madley
Modern companies claim to seek innovation. But mostly they fear it. Executives tremble at the perceived threat of a cabal of bespectacled geeks whose idols are Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. So, the awful adage "disrupt or be disrupted" haunts the hallways of every modern firm. Executives spend a good deal of their time listening to conference speakers who’ve not invented a thing in their lives fulminating about how the world should reinvent itself. I can’t stand the word "disrupt"; I prefer the word "improve". I ignored all that hype and I focused on one thing: uncovering the latent talent I knew was inside some of the brilliant individuals I walk the halls with every day. The real innovators out there are quietly inventing the future. They’re not planning to "disrupt" the world; rather, they want to improve it, and with it, the wellbeing of the human race. The ideas they give birth to are developed incrementally, built, rebuilt, broken, rebuilt and then dropped like silent depth charge...
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