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On The Inside Of Big Innovation

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When Forbes first asked me to contribute, they told me they wanted insight and opinions from the inside of a high-tech, high-growth company.  What’s it really like to be in the throws of it all? I’ve told a few stories, shared a few opinions. But for my next few articles, I’ll be taking a slightly different angle.

Right now at my company, Scale Computing, we are on the verge of launching a new product - and not just any new product. A major, industry changing, things-won’t-look-the-same-afterwards type of product.  We call it HC3. It’s the product that was the vision behind the founding of Scale some four years ago and now we’re on the cusp of bringing it to market.

Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”  That might sound a bit egotistical, but to anyone who has been on the inside of big innovation, this is absolutely true.  This statement could be mistakenly interpreted as, “people are stupid and I’m not.” But that isn’t at all what Steve is getting at here.

The thing about innovation is that it starts with a vision – a future view for how things could and should be.  That vision might be crystal clear to the individual who has it, but to the rest of the world, they may very well not “see it” right away.

The truth in Steve’s quote has become even more evident to me as we have moved toward bringing HC3 to life.  Early in the company’s life, the first employees and investors were attracted because they understood – or at least partially understood – what that vision was.  But as Scale evolved and our first products were introduced, new employees, partners and customers didn’t have as strong of a sense for that vision.  And that’s okay, because we had products in the market, we had demand for those products, and we had teams of people dedicated to making those products great.

When you have great products, people like to talk about those products. When they look to the future of those products, they think about incremental improvements – a linear path of progression one step at a time that makes the product better and better.

It’s fairly easy to think about “the future” in terms of products.  This product becomes that product over time.  If you think about the future of transportation, you might think about cars that get better gas mileage, use alternative fuels or have more passenger comforts.  If you think a little bigger, you may think of flying cars or self-driving cars.  In all of those incremental improvements, there lie great business opportunities.

However, big-time vision comes from looking beyond those incremental changes. Does better gas mileage revolutionize the industry?  No.  But what would? A teleporter.

There may have been a few of you who thought “teleporter” or something like it when I referred to “the future of transportation.”  Most people don’t jump there.  When you think about this in the context of explaining your ideas to employees, customers and investors, perhaps the truth behind what Steve Jobs said starts to become clear.  “We are going to build a car that gets better gas mileage,” is a vision that is easy to understand and attracts certain people to it.  “We’re going to invent the teleporter,” feels very different, even kooky.

However, if I actually had a teleporter and showed it to you, I bet the kooky-factor would change completely.  “We have invented this device and we intend to change the world with it.”  Now, it’s easy to get on board with the vision because you saw a product, you want the product, and future innovations of the product become incremental again – and that’s easy to understand. This is what Steve was getting at.

As Henry Ford put it, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

The bridge between vision and product realization is a difficult one.  There is a part of innovation that is fun, new and exciting. It’s easy to want to be a part of it.  But then there’s the part that is frustrating, chaotic and a ton of hard work.  The bigger the vision, the bigger these extremes.  Little visions have few unknowns.  Big visions have lots of unknowns.

So over the next few weeks, I’ll try to bring some light into this big-time innovation from inside the chaos and excitement of it all. Stay tuned.