Apple’s long-time former chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki encourages innovators to create unique and valuable products and services. Addressing Nextcon 2016, a marketing technology conference in Phoenix, he outlined 10 tips for all of us to innovate.
1. Make meaning when you innovate. Your product or service should add value to people’s lives, they should make meaning and this will get you money. He specifically cited Apple, Google and Wikipedia as examples of companies touching people’s lives beyond products and services.
2. Why should your meaning exist? Innovators must stop wasting time creating long mission statements that don’t make sense. Instead, come up with two or three words that describe why your innovation should exist. An example is FedEx, which simply says: “Peace of mind.”
3. Jump to your next curve. Entrepreneurs should strive to do things 10 times better than before and must define their businesses in terms of the benefits provided to customers.
4. Create products that are deep, that go beyond the ordinary. An example is Reef that makes beach sandals that have a bottle opener on their sole. Think hard of unique customer needs and set your standards higher. Be creative and empower customers with new solutions that go beyond the ordinary.
5. Don’t worry, be crappy. It’s okay to ship your product initially with some elements of crappiness in it. A minimum viable product is okay and it might have customers using it in unintended ways. This will give you opportunities to make money and iterate as you go along. He talked about his life in Silicon Valley where “people throw random stuff on the wall and maybe one percent sticks. We paint a round on it and sometimes it hits the bulls eye.”
6. Polarize people. Make products and services that truly disrupt existing markets and ensure that people really want tour product or service. TiVo, for example lets us watch television on our own terms without the hassle of advertisements.
7. Believe in churn. The hardest lesson for entrepreneurs is to let go and ship their revolutionary products and services. Listen to your current customers and those who can fix stuff for you.
8. Niche thyself. Make sure your product or service has a solid mix of both uniqueness and value. Having just one won’t help in any way. An example is Breitling’s watches that enable the customer to connect to a nearest wireless signal from any remote place on earth. According to Kawasaki, this is the most important aspect of being an entrepreneur.
9. Always perfect your pitch. When you make a presentation, start with a story. Just have 10 slides and make sure that you don’t go beyond 20 minutes.
10. Don’t let the naysayers let you down. He encourages entrepreneurs to be skeptical, find out how they can go to the next curve and make meaning as they work on innovative products and services.