Innovation Starts With Making That Scary First Jump

Marc Benioff shared this story with Inc. about Tony Robbins that once while they were vacationing in Fiji, Robbins decided to show him and four other friends something in the middle of the night. They drove out and soon came to a bridge where Tony Robbins stopped midway. Below the bridge was a raging river, and Robbins called out to his friends to jump off to face their fears! Benioff stared at the raging waters below, he was afraid, had no idea but he jumped anyway. After they were in the water, Robbins apparently an old hand at this then proceeded to tell them that there were poisonous snakes in the water!

Benioff explained that the experience, more than a reckless game of chicken, was a teachable moment. Robbins used that experience to deliver a valuable lesson about the need to overcome fear to achieve what you want.

So what is the teachable moment for innovators and for those who are about to embark on a project of innovation? Just like the jump by Marc Benioff into the raging river, the process of innovation will require you to overcome your fears and make that scary first jump by implementing the idea. There will be a lot of unknowns for any innovative endeavor and that is exactly how innovation is! And I found that getting clients to make that first jump is often the hardest but most essential. Because when they don't make it, they eventually give up on innovating.

Just today, I received an email from a client whom we have been working with for 14 months. They have decided not to take the plunge and introduce the full suite of new solutions which will reshape their industry and change their business. This is one of those days for me. You can work hard, put in a great team, help them redesign processes, think through the financial numbers, work with them on prototypes, build up the internal team, design the brand experience, calculate their exposure to minimize the impact on the business should it fail and still the client might not make the jump. The easy part is to fall back on what they are used to, but it also means that they won't see much of a difference.

a big part of it will require you to overcome your fears and there will be a lot of unknowns for any innovative endeavor. That is exactly how innovation works!

It kills me to see this happen especially when you know that a company has the potential and is well-positioned to change things but I can understand how difficult it is. We had to make our first jump too, more than twelve years ago. When we decided to evolve our business model to move from purely design services and move towards being a management consulting firm with design capabilities - there were no other company that was doing this in Asia at that time. We lost a lot of business in design as we stopped working on annual reports, stop free-pitching, recruited management consultants, started adding research into the business, organization structures, and using those insights to shape design outcomes.

It was stressful, frightening and there were occasional disputes among the partners. There were many moments of temptation to go back to where we were, but fortunately, we managed to survive those 'dark nights.' Eventually, referrals came through, people started associating us with transformation type of work, allowing us to grow our business and later, a network of partners all over the world. But if anyone asked us in 2004 if we knew what we were jumping into, we wouldn't be able to tell. But we knew we had to jump because if we didn't, we would be competing like every design firm: on price, on awards and having zero ability to shape business strategy which meant that we would be a victim of someone else's strategy that had no consideration about design. This was an unacceptable reality for us, and so we jumped.

In a testimony given by Phil Schiller of Apple during the case of Apple versus Samsung, Schiller said that Steve Jobs bet the whole company on the iPhone. It was a do or die situation, and no one knew how it would turn out. Obviously we now know that it was the right thing to do and the rest is history. Many times, people like to present innovation as this wonderful process of having colored papers on a wall, thinking creatively, collaborating in nice offices, doing something to shape the future. The reality is far from this picture of perfect bliss; it is a process filled with uncertainty, doubts and as Elon Musk puts it, "... like eating glass and staring into the abyss." Likewise in many moments during the journey of the innovator, you will be eating lots of glass and staring into the abyss as you fight for the survival of your idea.

There were huge risks [with the first iPhone]. We had a saying inside the company that it was a ‘bet-the-company’ product […] We were starting to do well again in iPod […] Then here we’re going to invest all these resources, financial as well as people, in creating this product - Phil Schiller

But if you stay where you are, you will never know but if you jump, you might discover a whole new world. We are sure glad we jumped, and I hope you will find the courage to jump too.

About Lawrence Chong

He is the Co-founder and CEO of Consulus, an innovation consultancy with business management and multi-disciplinary design capabilities. Lawrence is a featured speaker at global events such as World Marketing Summit and World Brand Congress. He served as the Immediate Past President of Design Business Chamber Singapore. His thoughts on innovation and creativity appear in regional media such as Business Insider, Business Times, Marketing Magazine, Newsbase, TheEdge , Prestige Magazine, VTC10. In his personal capacity, he is a member of the Focolare, a movement in favor of building a united world through dialogue, economics and politics.

About Consulus

Consulus is a global innovation consultancy with business management and multi-disciplinary creative capabilities. Since 2004, the firm has helped companies, governments and non-profit groups achieve sustainable profit and growth by redesigning their organisations, business models and brand experiences based on the firm's method of unity. The company's competitive advantage comes from the insights gleaned from reviewing companies in 18 cities throughout the Asia Pacific regarding their business and organizational models. Read about the PurposeCore programme if your organization is looking for an effective transformation to meet the complex challenges of the 21st century. Read about PlaceCORE if you are a government or a developer seeking an innovative solution to redesign cities or a place for success. Consulus is a member of the Economy of Communion

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Consulus is the convener for Shape the World Conference, a creative thought-leadership event aimed at providing design-led strategies to inspire companies to innovate and shape the world. In 2013, Consulus launched the World Company Day initiative to inspire companies to shape the world creatively into a better place through daily work.

The Consulus Partnership is present in Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Italy, Argentina, Bangladesh