The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

by Jim McKelvey

A cynical employee who meets a skeptical customer creates a downward spiral of negativity.

Imagine a company that has just invented a way to lower the cost of producing its product. It has two choices: keep the savings or share it with the customers. It may seem like the better choice from the company’s perspective is to keep the money. But keeping all the money sends two dangerous messages to the employees. The first is: watch out, you work for a place that will take everything it can get. The other message is: we value short-term gains over long-term goodwill. You might want to keep your résumé updated at that firm.

William Gibson famously observed, “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” Unfair as this situation sounds, Gibson’s words contain a hopeful promise: while only a few of us enjoy the latest cool thing, eventually the future will deliver it to us all. But who will make that delivery? Entrepreneurs distribute that future. The companies they build are not disrupters, they are market expanders for those people waiting for their slice of the future. If disruption occurs, it is merely a side effect. The focus of the entrepreneur is the people who cannot get a loan, or travel, or furnish their home, or get paid. The focus of the entrepreneur is on the horizon beyond the wall. If we glance at the system, it is neither to copy it nor to destroy it, but simply to see how much more can be done.

It is cruelly ironic that all the praise and admiration that we heap onto successful entrepreneurs arrives only after they have become successful. It’s like receiving a Kevlar vest as a get-well present after you’ve been shot.

Problems are beautiful things, especially when it comes to motivation. If you care about a problem deeply enough, for whatever reason, your motivation can be infinite. Problems are as clear as seeing a friend sleeping in his car. No expert has to tell you that something is a problem, you just know. A real problem is obvious.

There is also something magical about solving a problem that you care about. The reward is internal. Nobody has to tell you “good job” or put your name on the bank door. You know it. Even if you are the only person who knows what you have done, your satisfaction is undiminished. In fact, solving a problem I care about may give me so much joy that I don’t even want to explain it to anyone else, they just wouldn’t understand.