UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING BLOG

Inventors are a rare and precious breed. As the men and women who move civilization forward, they are revered and rightly so.

Think Edison, Land, Salk, Curie and Marconi. All were uniquely different, yet all were connected by an innovative DNA that enabled them to truly change the order of things.

More amazing than the inventor, judged through my prism, is the often unsung human force field who keeps inventing and then reinventing him\herself over and over again.

This form of magic applies in all walks of life, but it is never more valuable than in the world of business. Many good–even exceptional business people–build wonderful companies on the strength of an invention, an innovation and then for one reason or another (the founding concept may be the one epiphany they had to give), they are on autopilot from there on, unable to consummate a second act, much less a third, forth and so on.

And yet it is the ability, the skill, above all, the imagination to develop a stream of innovations over many years that is the supreme achievement in business. Clearly, no one pulled off this miraculous legacy with more power or success than Steve Jobs but in our own way, to our personal limits, we can seek to be reinventors all of our lives.

In fact, if we say “yes” to any of these questions, we must pursue continuous personal reinvention which spills over into and defines our companies:

*Is there room for improvement in our business models?

*Are there major goals we still seek to achieve?

*Do we want our companies to double, triple, quadruple or more, in size?

*Do we view our positions as adventures to be forever enriched?

*Are we eager to discover and leverage new opportunities as well as profiting from those we have already mastered?

As long as we seek to enhance ourselves, break new ground, explore rich new challenges, the spark of life and of success will remain lit. There are few greater blessings.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2012 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Unconventional Thinking . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.