Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Innovation

"Necessity is the mother of invention" and "Innovation is the mother of the future".

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. This last sentence is from wikipedia under the heading entrepreneur.

So, if one is thinking as an entrepreneur in regard to researching and starting a business one then naturally thinks, "What do people need?" and "What will they want to buy or use as a service."

And what form does one use to assess this?

The easiest way to look at this issue is to think about what people can't really live very long without. In other words all people need "Food, Shelter, and Clothing". But they also might like entertainment if they can afford any entertainment after obtaining food, shelter, and clothing which are the basics for keeping a human body alive in all weather conditions.

So, if you think about transportation air, land, and sea, and soon to be Space public transportation through Virgin Galactic, transportation falls under the category of having good food, shelter, and clothing come to your door (or at least the door of a shop or store near you). And what is the internet?
It is a way to buy food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and entertainment without leaving home. This is what it is from an entrepreneur's point of view.

Thinking in this way one can then begin to design a business around one's specific ideas. However, as a life long entrepreneur myself since about age 30 (even though I wanted to start sooner I found I couldn't wear enough hats i.e. owner, manufacturer, builder, salesman, bookeeper, of my own business successfully before about age 28 to 30 or more. Some people have family members who can teach them the tricks of being a successful entrepreneur at a very young age, however. But if you don't have a mentor (one or more) you will then have to move forward through the "School of hard knocks" or of real life experience. And might I say that all of us learn a lot more through our mistakes than our successes. This is just a given among human beings. So, the whole trick is to never give up no matter how many times you get knocked down by not considering one variable or another enough. It is only through stubborn determination at everything in life that one succeeds. And when one is young one may not know what true success is. For example, a successful marriage and getting one's kids through college and onto good careers might be the most satisfying success of all. And the best business with millions of dollars or even billions of dollars might mean nothing to you without someone and children to share it all with. So, in the end success is a very subjective thing and not really objective at all. So, the saying, "Walk a mile in my shoes" becomes very important around all this potential money.

So, once you have decided what is important in your life you embark upon whatever business or businesses you have designed with whatever inventions or innovations that have occurred to you.

The times we are presently in will create some of the most amazing innovations you and I have ever seen in our lifetimes. When the pressure is on during deep recessions or depressions come amazing amazing innovations.

I had written the next part and added it to this article but my wife said it didn't directly relate enough to "Innovation" so I made it a new article with a button you can click on below.

 

Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon, Facebook etc

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