SOME ACTION

BEATS NO ACTION!

     Growing up dirt poor, I learned the hard way that the old high school physics theorem (?) that a body in motion tends to stay in motion was true indeed, especially when it comes to both financial survival and to innovative thinking.

     Well, I guess it’s obvious that some degree of mental and physical hustle will generally produce a more stabilized income flow than sitting at the local bar downing beers or sitting on the beach counting grains of sand.  I can spare you the latter effort, by the way, by telling you there are approximately 10,000 grains of sand per average-sized handful.  (This magnificent piece of trivia is thanks to science and space superstar Carl Sagan from his marvelous COSMOS TV series.)

     But let’s take a quick look at the other end of the “motion” spectrum: innovating!  It’s important to keep in mind that literally ANYone can come up with creative ideas.  If you doubt this, ask those you would least expect capable of offering creative input for some creative ways to do something.  You’ll get them.  The point is that –in the end– creative ideas are worthless unless they are accompanied by detailed plans or strategies for how to implement them, how to make them work. 

     That’s innovation!

     Manufacturing a mattress that has a fire retardant in it is a creative idea that seems on the surface to be a positive step toward fire safety compliance, but when the fire retardant is made with toxic chemical ingredients that release chlorine and bromine traces that threaten the air we breathe and landfill leeching into waterways, the creative idea stops short of having real value. 

     Mattresses manufactured with harmless soy-based ingredients instead represent a path of true innovative thinking.  Someone didn’t just say, “Make ’em flame resistant!” 

     Instead, someone said, “Here are different ways to make the mattress so as to meet fire compliance codes and be safe to the consumers as well as the environment; here are the cost differentials; here is where the raw materials can be purchased and this is the expected delivery time and this is what the market will bear and here are the changes we’ll need to make in the manufacturing process, etc., etc. 

     And there’s no difference between the dynamics of this example and those involved with high-tech, or healthcare or, for that matter, with any other industry.

     Thinking a creative idea all the way through to completion or implementation is innovation.  It only happens with action (vs. inaction).  So go for it!  Besides, now you don’t need to count grains of sand.    

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Hal@Businessworks.US