First off, innovation is an over used word. It’s bland to me. It’s like that half and half creamer in those little cups that stay at room temperature all the time and you wonder, shouldn’t of that been refrigerated?
How does it keep?
How does innovation, the word itself, keep its golden crown of awe inspiring majestic wonder and promise? - it doesn’t…
Today’s scene is fueled more by the insanity of words like audacity, conflict, aggression, stubbornness, blind and or willfully onset to its own agenda ambition.
I like the word audacity myself. Sums me up well nicely. I choose. I choose to disrupt cause I can, haha, no biz model, just cause! Thats my favorite flavor of innovation. Straight up change for change sake. You didn’t ask for it and I did it anyways. Here ya go. Take it or leave it.
But like anything, it’s all on this constant curve.
The Apex
You’re shooting for that apex, you just don’t know it.
The apex in racing is that optimal curve to get around a corner efficiently as possible. The road thus far informs the curve notions. With repeated trips around the route, the notion of the curve, its apex, is more and more informed by the data set.
I love rally racing. I’ve never done it but I love the sense of speed and chaos combined.
Sure you see a guy driving a car really fast and applying just right amount of stuff to maintain or accelerate as needed and just go go go. This to me is also the POV of a successful startup.
In any given startup there is often an unknown course initially, but for someone like me, working on 30+ startups a year, I can see that apex pretty easily at times. A founder has to find the right mix of things to maintain, to accelerate, and not flip the car into the trees, doubling over and over.
So where’s Debbie come in?
After so many rally races I have two modes of being: 1, embrace the apex notions, or 2, be wildly aware the current speed, handling and attention inside the car which is suggesting you’re headed for the trees.
This is where Debbie Downer comes in. I can hear myself chirping like a bird in the cockpit of that car rapidly iterating on the current data notions, constantly re-informing my gut that we’re not gonna make it outa that curve. We’re about to get schooled by the apex.
Debbie isn’t always right. Some founders pull it off and I wonder, dumb luck or pure skill? A skillful driver is usually pretty evident tho on the onset. I guess I like to hedge my bets. I do live vicariously through my clients after all.