The story of isolated innovation !!

Internet has made the world a borderless place, access to information is just a click away and everybody has access to the same information pool around the world no matter where they live, whereas the innovation trends show that only certain parts of the world are responsible for over 90% of innovation happening around the world.

Talent is equally spread around the world with the same resources which means the reason of isolated innovation is not knowledge but something else. Urgency drives innovation, finding the product market fit defines how innovate will your company be, there are only two approaches to discovering your customers:

Design Thinking

I need to understand customer needs and iterate prototypes untill I find a technology and product that satisfies customer needs.

It focuses on understanding the needs of potential customers outside the building, it does not start with a founders vision and product in hand instead with “needs finding” and attempts to reduce new product risk by accelerating and learning through rapid prototyping.

Customer Development

I have a product / technology / service now who do I sell it to?

It fosuses on adroitly by translating urgency to the employees by making measurable progress in getting MVPs in front of customers, beating competitors, getting customers quickly and generating revenues and eventually build a culture of commitment and drive to make things happen.

While they both emphasize getting out of the building and taking to customers, they’re not the same in customer development product is your first priority and in design thinking customer comes first.

So what is it then?

If you do a deeper analysis on the innovation trends, most of it is driven by the places where it is easier to raise capital. If you ask any startup founder they would tell you the three numbers they live and breathe

1. The amount of cash left in their banks.
2. Their burn rate — the amount of money they are spending monthly minus any revenue coming i.n
3. The day they run out of money and have to shut the doors or get more money in.

Most of the companies start innovative with a larger vision focusing on the product first and transition from customer development to design thinking by tailoring their product to map on something people would want today not tomorrow, with a motivation to get the money by selling something and utilizing that money to build the innovative product.

This leads to building great companies by improving certain aspects of the existing technologies but this rarely ends up in creating a new product category because once you start getting customers you tend to give the best possible service to them and you enter a vicious cycle of keeping the cash flows constant to grow your company.

I believe this is the inevitable reason of why innovation happens in certain parts of the world, easier access to the initial seed money to build the first MVP leads to more innovative companies.

Inspired by — Steve Blank’s Book (Startup Owners Manual)