My son, an aspiring video game designer, was one of some 65,000 attendees a couple weeks ago at the PAX East trade show in Boston. In case you're not familiar with it (I wasn’t), PAX is short for Penny Arcade Exposition.
It may be an antiquated name and, no doubt, dates back to the days of mechanical pinball machines, which is probably why it has been shortened to three letters. But the show, its exhibitors and attendees were anything but old-fashioned.
A sophomore studying interactive media and game development at the university level, my son used the opportunity the show provided to mix with people he soon hopes to be working with. He dropped his business card around and picked up a few. He got insights into jobs in the industry, tried to meet the right people, attended various relevant forums on the state of the video game industry – which is exploding – and learned about where the new ideas and evolving companies are taking the state of the art.
One forum allowed audience members to question some of the leading lights in the industry, including some of the most respected reviewers, people who can make or break newly introduced games. My son asked one reviewer what kind of games he thought would be the big sellers in the near future, the kind of games designers should be concentrating on.
The answer was not what my son expected, but I think it revealed a lot about this person’s good business sense. In essence, he told my son not to focus on improving or expanding the current genre but rather to be innovative, to take risks, to try something new. He insisted that the industry has always thrived because of the unexpected and innovative ideas from daring pioneers.
That points up what is truly special about this business and why it is booming. His answer intrigued and excited my 20-year-old son, and gave him hope that the oddball ideas he has that may in fact come to fruition some day.
Do you remember that point in your career when you realized that those who are truly successful are those that take risks, rather than play follow-the-leader? I think that’s what dawned on my son. I could hear it in his retelling of the encounter. In fact, his experience provides a lesson to us all in business, no matter what we do for a living.
As businesspeople, we can try continually to one-up our competitors by doing what they are doing, but just a little bit better, differently, faster, more cheaply, or with better marketing.
What makes customers and prospects sit up and take notice, however, is when innovators shake up the world with something completely out of left field, something unexpected, exciting, and daring, something that challenges the status quo and our definition of “good.” Instead, they give the world something GREAT, something that blows our minds, that makes the chattering class chatter.
My personal favorite, of course, is Apple, a company that has done this so many times that we are disappointed when they fail to startle us. Even when they just introduce updates and improvements to existing products, they excite their fans, and confound their competitors.
But Apple doesn’t just introduce new products. They shake up and turn entire industries on their heads, in particular, the record/CD music business.
What does it take to stimulate this kind of innovation and risk-taking in an organization? It starts at the top with leaders who lead by example rather than words. Words on their own are just words. Action gives them meaning.
I remember once following a semi-tractor-trailer going down the highway. On the back door of the trailer were the company’s name, logo and tagline. I had never heard of the company, and its tagline didn’t reveal much about it either: “Service is Our Business.” The truck could have contained auto parts, foodstuffs, clothing, or any number of other consumer or industrial products.
Whether the company provided remarkable service or not is beside the point. It is akin to the company that plasters “Innovation” on its signage and advertising. Is that company trying to pass itself off as innovative by including the word in its signage, or is the nomenclature in fact driven by the internal innovative climate? I suspect it’s the former case.
“Innovation” is a fact about an organization discovered by its customers. It is not something to brag about, or to incorporate into a logo. Let the management lead by example, by being innovative leaders, by taking acceptable risks, and by allowing failure in the quest for greatness. That is how innovation happens.Not by calling one's self innovative.
That, I hope, is the experience that my son gets to have in his chosen profession.
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