When the invention comes to life, the change is sudden
When technology or an invention disrupts our world, it comes fast. It is unexpected. It vastly changes a paradigm.
There is a before and an after.
We all know of such changes. Within the courses of a few years, things are completely different.
It puts industries upside down
When the iPhone came in 2007, we went from stone age in terms of telephony to a modern age.
The relation between players completely and radically changed. Blackberry became “has been”, phone operators lost their power on the phone market, and became just “pipeline managers”.
Innovation accelerated and enabled tablets, watches, and other innovations ensued.
For our project, we think that we have to make a radical change
And when we project ourselves trying to create such change, we are imagining an abrupt change that will completely and radically make things different.
We want to make it be a “revolution”. We want to “break” things. We want to be “the One” doing it.
There was a before and after in our ideas, our execution, our management, our relationships.
Eureka does not exist. There is a long term course of things enabling your change
The Eureka moment is a lie. The truth is that when the massive change occurs, it is the end of a long cycle of enabling innovations.
What allowed iPhone was a combination of innovations with speed of processing units, large storage memory, quality of tactile technology combined with screens, precision manufacturing, global supply chain, progress in software engineering, development of faster network and telecommunications. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
People amid the innovation do not see it coming
Case studies and interviews of people at the heart of companies running such innovation did not expect such radical changes to occur.
They just did not come to the office one day, see the keynote and tell themselves that it was a tipping point.
They came to the office for months and years and slowly, steadily made improvements on their projects.
The organization improved, the collaboration became more efficient. The R&D projects bore fruits. The engineers mastered new skills.
And bit by bit it improved until a leap was made and became apparent and public.
Take slow and steady action, be patient
It is not selling books and won’t make you popular to claim that you should “get rich slow”, as famously put it Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos.
But the real meaningful change occurs away from the spotlight.
It does not take days or months. It takes years. We want to believe the “get rich quick” scheme, but it does not work.
Building trust, creating something impactful, growing a community takes time.
Now, are you willing to be patient, to take it one step at the time, slowly but steadily?