Even in a tough economy, there’s one thing you can count on to keep your business afloat: innovation.
The following entrepreneurs and experts reveal some of the secrets behind their success.
How to convince people they need your innovation
Over the past year, many different technologies have come out for
fighting
spam. Using traditional advertising to differentiate yourself in such a
crowded
market just doesn't work. Instead, we make sure all the technical
people at the
big companies, like IBM, get a free copy of our software. Once people
see the
techs using it, they assume it's the best product and start using it
themselves.
Karl Jacob is the CEO of Cloudmark, a company that develops
spam-fighting technology.
How to translate your ideas to foreign markets
So many American companies just jump into foreign markets without a
plan. Don't
bring your business plan in and then hire people. Hire people on the
ground
first who can make your idea happen, and then bring your plan over.
Jenny Hsui-Theleen is the
founder of ChinaVest, a venture capital firm focusing on
China.
How to win government grants for innovation
The federal government's Small Business Innovation Research program
alone gives out more than $1.5 billion in grants and contracts per
year. But the grant process is competitive, and entrepreneurs often don't get far
in it.
Keep grant proposals small and specific, and demonstrate that you [not]
only have an innovation, but that you have someone in your organization who
understands how to bring an innovation to market. Bring in an outside
professional who has experience [with] marketing ideas.
Jeff Hoffman is the
president and CEO of Danya
International Inc.,
an education company, and winner of 23 Small Business
Innovation Research grants and contracts.
How
to
sell a VC on your innovations
To show VCs you can generate returns that make risks worthwhile, you
must
demonstrate you understand how costs stack up when your business
expands.
Entrepreneurs often come to a VC with a business plan that projects
millions in
revenues, but lists a future staff of only 15 people. Those who provide
a
reasonable plan that shows potential liabilities and that includes
benchmarks
against other companies, will be more likely to raise capital.
Andrew Zacharakis is an associate professor at Babson
College
and a venture capital
specialist.
How to take advantage of new innovations
A lot of travel agents see the Internet as the innovation that is going
to put
them out of business. But why not draw on people's belief that the
Internet
always delivers lower fares, and advertise you can beat Internet fares?
That
bold statement draws customers. Then you deliver lower fares, and you
have
them. We check our internal booking engines so frequently, we get
better fares
than the online sites. Clients are shocked we can [beat] the Web, and
they
become repeat customers.
Bobbi Hansen is the
president of Sunflower
Travel.
How to create a new product
Allow everything in the environment around you to trigger ideas. In
November
1981, I worked for IBM, working with lasers, cutting organic plastics.
I was
sitting at my Thanksgiving dinner table, staring at the turkey, and
suddenly I
wondered how a laser would cut organic matter like a turkey-or a
person. I
stashed a turkey leg and went into my office the next day. With no one
around,
I used the laser to slice through the turkey leg and then looked at the
results
under a microscope. I found it cut right through and could remove tiny
bits of
material without causing heat burns to the tissue. From there, I
developed the
idea of using lasers to cut eyes.
Rangaswamy Srinivasan
invented laser eye surgery
and is the 2002 inductee into the Inventors Hall of Fame.
How to survive in an industry dominated by big
companies
You can be inventive in the executive recruiting business and still
[have] no
customers because the industry is dominated by large companies. We
target
midsized companies, and we hammer over and over the advantages we have
over big
firms. As a small company, identify one thing you do better and then
hammer at
how much better you can do that task.
Bruce Frimmerman is the
president and CEO of executive
recruiting company Recruit
Masters Inc.
How to get respect
When I moved into doing very specialized health-care software work, I
got
respect. If you make the effort to master an industry, such as
health-care
software, that demands that you know a large amount of specific detail.
People
will take you seriously because the barriers to entry are high. Even if
you are
in an industry that requires less specialization, dedicate yourself to
gaining
mastery of some specialized details, and you will get respect.
Jayson Meyer is the
co-founder of Meyer
Technologies/WorkSmartMD.
How
to get
authority
Get invited to speak at as many conferences and academic events as
possible.
When you appear as a speaker, it gives you the aura of an expert and
makes any
ideas or innovations you talk about seem credible. A few weeks ago, I
participated in a seminar in Boston. Afterward, four people in the
audience
approached me asking for my services. If I had cold-called them, they
wouldn't
have answered.
Rob
Levinson
is the founder of RL Strategies,
a marketing and public relations consulting firm.
How to anticipate the future
Let the consumer lead you in anticipating the future. So many
entrepreneurs
come up with a technology and become wedded to it and wedded to how
consumers
should use it. But they don't anticipate that consumers might use it in
different ways than they had intended. The makers of baking soda made
it as a
baking product. But they knew that consumers could help them anticipate
the
future, so they put a note on the sides of baking soda cans that said
"If
you have other ideas for how to use this product, let us know." And
that's
how we wound up also using baking soda to fight odors.
Michael Zey is a futurist
and the author of Future Factor.
How to reinvent commonplace technology
Don't try to just improve on existing technology and market your
product as
such. You have to start from scratch if it's an idea or a product the
public is
already extremely familiar with. Then you have to advertise your new
product as
totally different from the existing technology; don't remind consumers
of the
existing thing, but convince them you offer a new experience.
Hettie Herzog is the
president of Automated
Distribution
Tecnologies Inc.,
a developer of a fully
automated kiosk that dispenses up to 200 different items.
How to brainstorm successfully
Go to sleep. There's nothing like your subconscious [for]
brainstorming. I
identify a problem I think needs to be fixed, tell my mind to focus on
it, and
then I take a nap in the afternoon. I keep a pad by my bed and wake
myself up
and write down what comes to mind. This is how I have come up with
hundreds of
brainstorms.
"Cactus" Jack Barringer is
the founder of Reality
Sports
Entertainment Inc.
and the inventor of a dozen
products.
How to break the rules
Successful innovation must include doing things everyone will tell you
is a
terrible idea. Among stupid ideas, I suggest hiring some slow learners.
People
who are slow to understand how things are done in your organization,
whom you
might even dislike, often are the ones who come up with new ideas.
Every few months, do the most random thing you can at your business, without picking something that would wreck your company. Human beings naturally have a positive emotional reaction to things we see every day and a negative one to new things. When we do random things, we overcome that negative impulse against new ideas.
Don't think about big ideas. Most successful entrepreneurs, like George Zimmer, owner of The Men's Wearhouse, take an idea and make it only a tiny bit better, but then do that tiny extra bit incredibly well.
Encourage your staff to ignore their superiors. A Navy admiral
once approached
me at a conference and told me most of the great innovations in the
Navy over
the past century came from people who would have been court-martialed
for
disobeying superiors while they were working on their projects.
Robert Sutton is the author
of the bestselling book Weird Ideas That Work.
How to get an early start on entrepreneurship
Children and teens are better at generating innovation than adults
because they
haven't failed many times in life and they don't put up barriers around
themselves. If you have a kid who shows potential, you need to make
entrepreneurship as much of a game for them as possible; it makes it
easier for
them to overcome obstacles they face. Then they see the obstacles as
part of
the fun, and they see there will be a way of getting past obstacles and
reaching the finish line.
Bonnie Drew is the senior
executive vice president of Young
Biz Inc.,
a company that trains young entrepreneurs.
How to go with your gut
In the toy and collectibles industry, you have to use bad taste. I go
to gift
shows, toy shows and flea markets and look for items that trigger my
bad taste.
They have to be well-done tasteless things-things Americans will love.
In the
70s, I started buying old tiki bamboo furniture and tiki shirts from
tag sales.
It hit the right balance of kitsch-it conjured up images of 1950s
American
couples sipping mai tais in the backyard-and it was a huge seller in my
store.
Now, chains like Crate and Barrel sell Polynesian furniture, and Target
sells
tiki shirts.
Billy Shire owns Wacko toy store.
How to encourage employees to innovate
Don't let them be automatons. The best companies take the risk of
letting their
employees make major decisions involving decent sums of money. At
McDonald's,
the employees don't come up with new ideas because they are not allowed
to make
a decision about anything important without consulting the manager
first. At
Home Depot, any employee on the floor can make a decision about whether
to discount
a product or whether to change something they think is marked wrong.
Some of
these decisions can cost thousands of dollars. It's not surprising that
Home
Depot gets many new ideas from ordinary workers.
Arnold Sanow is a business
strategist and the author of Marketing Boot Camp(Kendall/Hunt
Publishing).
How to spur creativity
Require that everyone in your company bring a new idea as his or her
ticket to
a meeting. The meeting can't start until everybody has punched their
tickets.
Michael Michalko is the
author of Thinkertoys.
based on: Entrepreneur Magazine – May 2003 – Joshua Kurlantzick
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