Yesterday I posted a link to the movie “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”. But I couldn’t really put into words why I like this movie and why I think you should see it.
Because I think there is a lesson here for small businesspeople.
I believe many small businesspeople are not as innovative as they can be because they are waiting for some “thing” they think will make them become innovative. Money, time, a magical mentor, outside help or “when things are easier, then I’ll work on it.”
As this movie shows (based on a true story, look for the book and Ted Talk) it don’t work that way.
Here was a kid whose family was literally dirt poor, hungry, yet was able to solve his families’ and villages’ food crisis with scrapped together junk and innovation. He not only saw the need, but felt the need himself, and figured out a way to meet that need. No fancy computer, no degree, hell, not even the basics we take for granted. He failed, tried again, failed, tried again until he succeeded.
Failing doesn’t make you a failure. Giving up, accepting your failure, refusing to try again does.
Richard Exley
The best innovation does not come from when things are easy. It comes when things are HARD. When your back is against the wall. When there is a problem that has to be solved – NOW! And you have to scramble and try and fail and try again and scrap together some cockamamie frankenstienian thing that solves that problem.
Later, you can make it look pretty.
A number of years ago we had a 4′ x 20′ banner to print for a client. Problem was that the banner would not process for printing. It would start go for a while and crash. Start, go for a while, and crash. It was maddening. I tried everything I could think of. Tech support. Changing things in the file. Saving different formats.
Shipping cutoff time was getting closer and closer.
Then I remembered an old image processor I used to use for 35mm slide imaging still loaded on an old computer we didn’t use. It could output TIF files (a bitmap format). Our printer processer could dump TIF files directly to the printer. Maybe…
I ran the image through that old processor. It took an hour but it worked! It made this humungous TIF that I just dumped to the printer. Another hour to print – each side. Trimmed it, hemmed it. Rolled it up. Drove like a mad man to get to Fedex at O’Hare by 10:00pm. Handed it to the Fedex person just as she was locking the door. Got to California by 9:00 am the next morning for their grand opening. Happy client. Relieved me.
That is not the real story. The real story is that I started running everything through that old image processor (on a newer computer.) It cut our image processing/printer time from that point on by 25%.
That was a hard day. It was stressful, maddening, and believe me, there were more than a few times that I just wanted to say “screw it.” But I didn’t. And that made the difference.
What are you waiting for?
