How to be a Remarkable Innovator

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Hello, I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. Usually this podcast features interviews with remarkable people such as Steve Wozniak, Jane Goodall, Arianna Huffington, Steve Wolfram, Sir Ken Robinson, Gary Vaynerchuk, John Thompson. But today is different. Every once in a while I like to change the format and provide a mini keynote about a specific subject. The goal for these is to help you become remarkable as quickly and easily and rapidly as possible. This episode's topic is how to be a Remarkable Innovator. First, a little bit about my background. I was a software evangelist for the Macintosh division of Apple. I started there in 1983. I left there in 1987. My job was to convince software and hardware companies to create products for Macintosh. This is where I first learned about innovation from none other than Steve Jobs. It wasn't easy learning from him. Everything you've heard about him is true. He was difficult to work for, a perfectionist, but he was a visionary and he had passion. One of the main hindsights in my life is that as I look back, the teachers and the bosses who are the toughest on me are the ones that helped me learn the most. I always use the top 10 format. This is because I want to make it easy for people to track progress through my podcasts or if they see me in person through my speech. So these are my top 10 tips for how to be a remarkable innovator. Make Meaning Meaning means that you make the world a better place, in the words of Steve Jobs, that you dent the universe. The foundation of all great innovation is a desire to make meaning as opposed to make money. Think of the meaning that great companies have made, such as Apple increasing people's creativity and productivity, Google making information available to everyone. I now work as the Chief Evangelist of Canva. Canva's meaning is to democratize design so that anyone can create beautiful graphics to communicate better. Step number one make meaning how are you going to dent the universe? How are you going to make the world a better place. Because if you do make meaning and you do dent the universe and you do make the world a better place, you probably will also make money. But if you set out with the sole purpose of making money, you will attract the wrong kind of people. And you probably will not make money nor make meaning. Step 2 Jump to the next curve. Great innovation occurs when you get to the next curve, not duke it out on the same curve. Think of the ice business. There used to be an ice harvesting business. People would go out to a frozen lake or frozen pond, saw horse, sleigh. That was ICE 1.0. 30 or 40 years later, there's ICE 2.0. Now we have an ice factory. The ice factory can freeze water any city, any time of year. It does not have to be a frozen lake or a pond. Another 30 or 40 years go by. Now, ice 3.0. This is the refrigerator curve. On the refrigerator curve, you don't need to have an ice factory near your house. You have an ice factory in your house. It's called a refrigerator. A PC, if you will, a personal chiller. But here, here's a very important lesson. None of the ice harvesters became ice factories and none of the ice factories became refrigerator companies. Because most companies define themselves in terms of what they already do. If you define yourself as a harvester, you don't create a factory. If you define yourself as a factory, you don't create a refrigerator. Number three, eat your cows. Jane Goodall, please forgive me. This is not about eating meat. Here's a great story for you. An engineer in 1975 at Kodak invented digital photography. Wrap your mind around that. An engineer at Kodak invented digital photography. Can you imagine what probably happened when he went to his boss and said, I figured out a way to make it so that no one needs to buy film. Hallelujah. What a great idea for Kodak. The point here is to eat your cash cows and use that to create new cows. Number four, Bobby McFerrin had a great song. Don't Worry, Be happy. What remarkable innovators do is they don't worry, be crappy. Which is to say that when you are on the next curve, when you have gone from Ice 1 to Ice 2 to Ice 3, you don't have to worry about having the perfect refrigerator or the perfect factory or the perfect digital camera. Getting to the next curve does not mean you have to reach perfection before you jump. It's okay to have elements of crappiness. Think of the first laser printer. $7,000 single sided eight and a half by 11. Only slow network piece of crap. But it was already so much better than the best daisy wheel printer or letter quality printer. It was okay to ship. Number five, Great innovators focus on merit. This is something that people underappreciate about Steve Jobs. He did not care about your race, sex, creed, color, religion, sexual orientation, anything like that. All he cared about was competence. It is so hard to find great people. Why would you limit the gene pool by having stupid beliefs based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, skin color, anything like that. Focus on merit. Number six, polarize people. I'm not saying you should intentionally piss people off, but I'm telling you that remarkable products polarize people. Some people love what you do. Some people will hate what you do. Some people love the Macintosh. Some people hated Macintosh. It's okay. The worst case is when you're not even on the radar. People just don't care. Don't be afraid of polarizing people. Number seven, don't be afraid of changing your mind. Many people believe that changing your mind is a sign of stupidity. Quite the contrary. Changing your mind takes great intelligence. It also takes great courage. When Apple introduced the first iPhone, it was a closed system. You couldn't add app functionality. All you could do was add functionality through Safari plugins. A year after introduction, Apple opened up the iPhone. Now you could write any kind of app that you want. Basically, Apple did a 180 and the rest is history. Don't be afraid of changing your mind. Number eight is the magic quadrant. This is the key to all marketing, all evangelism, and all innovation. A vertical axis measures the degree of differentiation of your product or service. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product or service. Basically, the corner you need to strive for is the upper right hand corner where you have something that is unique and valuable. If it's valuable but not unique, you always have to compete on price. If it's unique but not valuable, you're just plain stupid. If it's not unique and not valuable, you are stupid. And there's a lot of other stupid people doing the same thing. If you're an engineer, you're supposed to design products that are unique and valuable. If you're the marketeer, your job is to convince the world that what you have is unique and valuable. Think of the first ipod. It was truly unique and valuable. It had an interface that a mere mortal could operate, a wide selection of music, easy to download that music, legal to download that music, and inexpensive.99 cents. The iPod was truly a unique and Valuable product. And that's why it succeeded. Number nine, let 100 flowers blossom. This means that at the start of remarkable innovation, you have to plant a lot of flowers. You really don't know how people will use your product or service. So get it out there. With Macintosh, we thought we had it all figured out. Spreadsheet, database and word processor, we were basically 0 for 3. Desktop publishing was the flower that bloomed. If it wasn't for desktop publishing, there would be no Apple. So take your best shot at positioning and branding and marketing and all that good stuff. But understand, get your product out, see where it takes root, see where it flowers and take care of those flowers. Number 10. The Black Panthers, political revolutionaries had a saying, burn baby, burn. Burn down the system. What remarkable innovators do is they churn baby churn. Churn baby churn means that you take version one of your product, you make it 11 2, 1 3, 1 4, 1 5, 2.0. This is one of the hardest things for an innovator to do, because to be an innovator, you need to be in denial. You need to be willing to ignore people, as they say, it can't be done, it shouldn't be done, it isn't necessary. But then once you ship, you have to flip that bit and start listening to people as they tell you how to evolve your revolution, churning your revolution. Number 11, a bonus for you. If you want to be a remarkable innovator, you have to learn how to ignore naysayers. These are the bozos who are going to tell you it can't be done, it shouldn't be done, it isn't necessary. Two kinds of bozos in the world. One bozo is clearly a loser. That's not the dangerous bozo, because only a loser would listen to a loser. I'm assuming because you're listening to my podcast, you're not a loser. The dangerous bozo is the bozo that looks like a winner. Rich, famous, powerful, dresses in all black. Lots of things that end in I like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati. This is the dangerous bozo because you think, oh, rich and famous parses to smart. If that smart person says it can't be done, it shouldn't be done. It isn't necessary. I should listen to that smart person. That's why it's dangerous. You need to build up your resistance so that when you encounter bozosity, it will not dissuade you. Here are some examples. I think there's a world market for maybe five computers. Thomas Watson chairman of IBM, allegedly said this in 1945 this telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. Western Union internal memo 1876 There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home. Ken olson, founder of DEC 1977 IBM, Western Union, DEC all successful organizations. And yet they were so wrong about some innovations. I'm not saying that when people say you'll fail, it means you'll succeed. It's not that simple. But if you listen to these bozos and these naysayers and never try to, you will never know. And that's the worst outcome of all. Okay, here we go. Here are some recent comments from Philly Cheese. I really like that you make the interview all about your guests and not about you. Amen, Philly Cheese. This is all about the remarkable people, not me. I'd love to hear more comments. Go to the Apple Podcast app and rate and comment away. Hi, I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. My thanks to Peg Fitzpatrick and Jeff C. Who are part of my remarkable podcast team. Be healthy, be safe, wash your hands, stay far away from people. Until next time. This is remarkable people.