Narrow Thought: The Innovation Bug

Building a company, the first question founders answer is hardly “what sector should we conquer,” the quintessential question is always “what next.”

I am not sure Steve Jobs was thinking the exact thing I am thinking when he decided to rebrand Apple as Apple Inc, leaving behind Apple Computers. Apple was becoming more of the conventional all-conquering American corporation, albeit with disruptive innovation. Today, Apple has pivoted from just computers (though their businesses are still in the technology market, but computers back in the 1990s were largely stereotyped as desktops) and now predominantly electronic/digital products.

Apple has lacked pure innovation in recent years, but part of it may be due to a narrow scope in thought. Several companies are guilty of this same crime. I will give you examples.

Why did Facebook have to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram? I understand that they needed to control the space they occupy. But, why didn’t Mark Zuckerberg think of ‘what next’ like he did when starting the company? Why do you have to keep making investments in the same industry just so you can kill yourself and others innovating and just make more money?

I do not in any way promote any organisation above another, but I love Amazon. Amazon and Microsoft are the companies I can say have been truly innovating in the last five years. Amazon really is the true innovator here. Whole Foods, Prime, AWS, Amazon Go, KDP, e-commerce, DoorBot [I’m not sure this is still the name], and more. The guys at Amazon are constantly thinking of ‘what next’ without limiting the answer to the same industry they were founded. That is true innovation.

Here in Lagos, Nigeria, we have examples of companies who are literally stressing over extra naira and forgetting what brought them to life was the question ‘what next’. This is not a wakeup call or any negative write-up about these incredible organisations, but I wished fewer players were going into the taxi/okada/keke ride hunt! There are already enough hunters, let’s go for a better and different hunt!

It took Microsoft several years and billions of dollars to understand this act of embracing true innovation. I hope companies do more to create more where none existed. We should embrace pure innovations, not entering into a market when others have done the work and you just want to have a share, and you say it’s disruptive. The word ‘disruptive’ has even become jargon in startup dictionary. Every startup uses it – we are disrupting this and building the next big that.

Uber and Airbnb are more examples. While Airbnb has been focused more on creating experiences for the consumer (which is the true reason for founding the company and such transcends industries), Uber has been exerting all energy on ride hailing and movement – taxi, Eats, air transport, etc. Personally, I think Airbnb will be more valuable than Uber in the long term. Nonetheless, I wished both companies are sponsoring autonomous driving in some way. I wish they were invested in incredible establishments like Beyond Meat and all those truly innovative organisations that are pushing the human race forward.

Hopefully, when you become a senior executive at a banking firm, you can lead the bank into investing heavily in solar energy replacing all forms of domestic energy.

I hope you can see the world and how it is with all of its opportunities, not just the space you occupy.

Hegel said "To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational." Be independent of what everyone says is the next. Curate your own next thing.