The Love for Excellence in Innovation

The love for excellence in innovation is far from meaning a quest for perfection. One of the problems with the quest for perfection is that it is truly unattainable, as we are always going to find a better way to do whatever it is that we do. Also, trying to achieve perfection creates the conditions to just do nothing. I’ve spent countless hours in meetings revising a project over and over again, because the team leaders want it to be perfect. By the time we launched the project, it became a monster very difficult to explain and use, and it also lost the powerful impulse that it had when it was first conceived. In designing and implementing innovations, perfection doesn’t exist and excellence is not perfection. So, what is excellence, then?

The love for excellence is rather a call to fully invest our efforts and energy in whatever it is that we're designing, trying to make it the best possible and most valuable product with the tools and resources that we have at hand. Even more important, we have to know from the very onset of the innovation that the initial design will constantly morph and adapt in order to continually become more and more relevant to its users. Excellence, then, is not creating the perfect product, but one that is really useful to its customers and has the capacity to quickly adapt to their ever increasing demands. What makes a product truly valuable, excellent, relevant and sustainable goes far beyond its existing capabilities, and it actually depends on its continuous improvement to reach higher levels of performance and customer satisfaction.

We are living in a time where there are so many people and startups sprouting everywhere, competing for market share and customers' attention. It seems that the invitation for excellence could be overridden by the need for doing more, faster with less, in order to remain relevant and avoid getting crushed by the competition. While it is true that opportunities for success and greatness are increasing everywhere, it is also true that the possibilities to enjoy those opportunities are becoming more and more difficult to reach. The gap is not the lack of opportunities, but the increasing amount of players in the game. And one factor that makes a difference between one entrepreneur or startup and another is how excellent their product is, or how well suited it is to satisfy their customers and how fast it can adapt to uncertain conditions.

Let's put it this way: at this very moment there might be hundreds if not thousands of entrepreneurs and startups around the world trying to do exactly the same thing we are doing, but not everybody is driven by the love for excellence. Some are striving to design and implement products that are similar to ours, maybe faster, cheaper and better. However, the premise of how fast we can put an innovative product out there is not enough. Access to information and technology has made it easier for everybody to innovate. But in times of exponential disruption and innovation, the love for excellence can truly make a difference between competing products.

The love for excellence in innovation comes in many forms. It begins by total dedication and commitment to what we are designing. This doesn't mean an emotional attachment to the idea that we are designing or implementing. That idea might need a lot of experimentation and iterations before it becomes actually useful, and eventually its latest form could be very different from what we had envisioned at the beginning.

Dedication and commitment mean fully enjoying the work that we are doing, learning in the process and finding meaning in it. In doing so, it is more likely that we will continue working and moving forward despite of the challenges ahead and the failures along the way. Those who don’t love excellence, and yet are trying to create an innovation and quickly succeed, will give up as soon as things get tough and nasty out there. What increases our love for excellence is keep trying and trying when things are getting difficult. As I said before, more people and startups are competing for market share, but not all of them are willing to make the necessary sacrifices demanded by long term success. Love for excellence is the willingness to let things go, to sacrifice, to get knocked out by the difficulties and, yet, get back up and try again.

The love for excellence also means flexibility and adaptation. No matter how good a strategy seems to be, sometimes it simply doesn’t work. This doesn't mean that the strategy is bad in itself, but maybe the timing or the circumstances are not the best, or it is just not suitable for the target population. We need to be prepared to be flexible and quickly adapt. We need to be agile. Loving excellence is reinforced by a constant process of checking our assumptions, experimenting and making our ideas and products better and better. Those who try to make the perfect product don’t understand that things change very quickly. But in a world full of uncertainties, it is better to be prepared for change than think that we have the final answer to our customers’ needs. Excellence is adaptation, flexibility and agility.

How are you pursuing excellence when designing and implementing innovations in your organization? Are you fully committed and dedicated to the ideas you are working on? How flexible and agile are you?

Follow me on Twitter: @erubio_p
Visit my blog: www.innovationdev.org

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About the Author: Enrique Rubio is an Electronic Engineer and a Fulbright scholar with an Executive Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Enrique is passionate about leadership, business and social entrepreneurship, curiosity, creativity and innovation. He is a blogger and podcaster, and also a competitive ultrarunner. Visit the blog: Innovation for Development and Podcast. Click here to follow Enrique on Twitter. 

Disclaimer: opinions are my own and not the views of my past or current employer