This is the price of innovation. For the sake of progress, we constantly try things that may or may not work.

The challenge isn’t in making mistakes. It is in knowing the difference between good and stupid mistakes.

A good mistake is trying something that was never tried before, and fail. Nobody knew whether it would work, therefore it was worth trying. It becomes a learning experience.

A stupid mistake is ignoring the advice of people who have done it before.

(An even more stupid mistake is to listen to advice from posers who seek attention and have actually never done what you are doing.)

Savvy entrepreneurs strike a balance between confidence and humility. They are unstoppable with their vision, but they also seek advice in order to make that vision a reality.

What good mistake did you make today?

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

Sounds difficult?

This is exactly what you do with your business, though. Transforming total strangers into customers is the most challenging thing to accomplish. It is the validation that you do, in fact, have a business.

Failing that, you could try a much easier challenge: win some startup competition or entrepreneurship award.

Such awards are nothing but a business for the organizers. A self-promotion tool for the judges. A distraction for the entrepreneur away from building a validated business: costing time, money, or both.

Don’t be fooled by the red carpet and the gold medal and the short-lived media coverage. Today you are a rock star, tomorrow everyone will have forgotten what happened.

Customers don’t care that you win an award that was granted by a bunch of posers who aren’t your customers, therefore unqualified to judge you.

Counting on an award is like asking someone who has never jumped into water to save you from drowning. It is also an excuse to justify the fear of shipping and of getting judged by the people who matter in the real world.

Shipping is precisely all you need to do.

And paying customers are the only award you need to win.

Once you start to win the only real award, get your customers to speak on your behalf, because they have earned the authority to do so. Testimonials from your customers is pure gold, and completely free.

You, in turn, have earned all the credibility you need.

In the innovation business, real competition is not another company. It is the status-quo. The “king” in charge, so to speak.

It is easy for anyone to imagine, build, and sell something a little cheaper, a little faster, a little smaller, a little better than an existing solution. However, by definition, it is just a little different, incremental, and doesn’t bring much change.

A new detergent can be a little more powerful than its predecessor, but overall, it cleans our laundry pretty much the same way.

Is it far more difficult to imagine, build, and sell something radically different. How about a washing-machine that raises the temperature of the water high enough, that it doesn’t need detergent at all?

Disruptive innovation is just that — going to the root, bringing new benefits that cannot be compared with the old ways, while at the same time, shaking up entire industries.

Traditionally, the incumbent “kings” choose to resist change.

Resistance always causes friction, which causes heat, which causes pain, because it is fear-based. Ask the music industry, which didn’t see the internet coming, and decided to fight for survival in the court room (they lost, and repeated the same mistake as 25 years ago with FM radio: what appeared to be a threat to their record business, turned out to be the most efficient model to reach the masses at virtually no distribution cost).

Acceptance is about taking advantage of change, rather than resisting it. Ask any improv actor. The results are, one might say, magical. In fact, they are just normal, because that is how nature works: it adapts and evolves. It is resisting that isn’t natural.

This is why asking customers what they want is not the way to bring about true change. It is a way to go around fear of uncertainty, an insurance policy to justify a potential future failure if the market doesn’t respond: “But customers said they wanted it!”. Surveys don’t work for innovation, because people can say they like purple, and then they buy yellow.

The same way with voting for a candidate rather than another. The difference can only be incremental. History shows that societal change is never initiated by the kings in charge, but by the people below them.

“All streams flow to the ocean, because the ocean is below them. Humility is what gives its power.” — Lao Tze

Do we want disruption anyway? What is wrong with the status-quo? At the pace the world is changing, there is no choice: if something can be changed, it will be; and if we don’t do it, someone else will.

There are basic business, legal, and organizational principles to respect. This is the foundation. With that in place, the way to disrupt, is to have the curiosity to observe, and make connections. Immersing oneself with people and situations that are away from our familiar comfort zone. Caring and having the courage to fulfill our life-mission to serve others with our unique gifts.

What is visible shows only the past, never the future. True innovation is far more difficult, and far more rewarding, as it is about connecting dots that are still invisible.

An idea is worth nothing without execution, but good execution of a bad idea is equally worthless.

Thomas Edison had a vision: to light up the world with electricity. He didn’t know exactly how to build a light-bulb, so he tried a thousand small variations, and eventually succeeded.

He didn’t “pivot”, starting with a light-bulb, failing a few times, and switching to build a espresso-machine instead.

He remained focused on the light-bulb, over and over, because his genius was the vision, and the rest was execution.

The vision is what separates the women from the girls, the leaders from the followers, the innovators from the posers. It takes exceptional talent and courage to come up with a vision and execute it persistently without knowing exactly how to do it.

Finding a problem worth solving is as important as solving it.

On the other hand, starting out without clarity of vision, and hoping to magically find it along the way through countless iterations, doesn’t require much talent or courage. Chickens run around in all directions — and they usually get their heads cut off by the millions. (There are a few companies that became successful following this approach, but these aren’t the rule, and are as rare as winning the lottery)

While defining the initial Vision is essential, it is only the beginning. Countless more ideas need to be generated continually, in order to execute and turn that Vision into reality. This is why both creative individuals and executors are equally necessary during the entire journey.

Execution is about knowing HOW to do something. This is usually found in books.

Ideas are about knowing WHAT to do (and not to do), and WHEN. The ability to make decisions with incomplete information. This is what we do at the Founder Squad gatherings. This isn’t found in books.

Execution is worth 50%. So are ideas.

How to market your products, your services, your talents, in a saturated world? As customers get flooded with always more information, it is increasingly difficult to rise above the noise.

Standing out isn’t about making even more noise all over the place. One way to be outstanding is to look at the world… backwards.

History shows that positive change is usually started by a minority of people who challenge the status-quo with the opposite view.

Heard of globalization? The world is saturated with stuff. You can buy a bottle of American soda in the African jungle. There is nowhere else to go on this planet.

When Alexander The Great thought he had conquered the entire world, he began to cry.

Think Backward: the future isn’t global, it is local. What is needed is what globalization cannot provide: close relationships. We value what is intimate, personalized, and that which cares about us.

The future is local is many ways: local food production, local energy generation, local services, short-distance transportation, vertical education, mesh networks, resilient communities, distributed infrastructure.

Want to start a company that helps people find products at lower prices? You can come up with a disruptive differentiator, or realize that the way the world’s economy is going, people are going to be increasingly selecting between what they want and what they actually need.

Think Backward: start a company that helps people to sell, or better yet, to SHARE what they have.

Want to invent a new detergent that cleans laundry even better? Yet another multi-billion-dollar market that is saturated. The competition isn’t so much about chemicals or quality of cleanliness, and more about branding.

Think Backward: invent a washing-machine that boils the water and requires NO detergent at all. You will stand out so much, the media will love it. The incumbents will fight it to the teeth, ironically doing all the advertising for you and for free — just make sure you hire a bodyguard!

Want to be popular? Getting Facebook “Likes” has some value, but mostly to people who believe that the more popular something is, the better it is. Did we mention the world is changed by minorities, not by the majority that follows them?

Mercedes-Benz may have a small share of the automobile market, but it is focused on excellence, and it is much more profitable than other car makers that barely survive.

Think Backward: focus on substance. Don’t worry about looking popular: people don’t care as much as you might think. Those who truly matter (your customers) will appreciate the rare attention you give them by excluding everyone else.

Want to make a difference? You can be reactive, follow, imitate, copy other people’s styles, comment on other people’s work, make some noise to get temporary attention. Small risks yield small rewards.

Think Backward: have the courage to be proactive, come up with your own thinking, innovate, create your own concepts, solve meaningful problems a way that nobody thought about before.

Want an easy life?
Think Backward: how about working hard.

Want to gain?
Think Backward: how about giving.