“Necessity is the mother of all innovation”

The title is so cliché – mentioned my authors, writers, commentators and bloggers throughout the world – yet this short dictum bores the lifeblood and is the foreteller of business, economic progress and general development for humanity.

As a Christian, my life is underpinned by my faith and understanding of the Word as given in the Holy Scriptures – if we look at Genesis 3 verse 17; God says to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life….”

Adam must have thought to himself – what now; the ground is cursed, hard and arid – to eat, will have to make a plan.

This first necessity resulted in the development of tools – tools to tame the harsh land, to produce food and a livelihood for Adam and his family.

As the generations have gone by, key points in history – defining moments in the lives of the inventors, innovators and imitators, has resulted in a myriad of inventions, processes and technologies.

Over the years, I have found it very interesting and sometimes entertaining – how the illusion of success or progress, renders one incapable of growth and development. We see this in many empires that came and went, decadence was at the heart of their fall, no longer needing to fight, innovate of compete has resulted in them, losing their place.

Let’s take the ICE Trade – this was the transport and sale of natural ice for domestic consumption and commercial purposes, a precursor to refrigeration.  The natural progress from ice supply to refrigeration to cooling seems to obvious now, but none of the companies in ICE Trade, developed and grew into Refrigeration companies or air cooling and air conditioning companies. At each stage in the growth of these companies, they viewed themselves as the pinnacle, having an “I have arrived” mentality – switching off the vein of innovation that gave birth to the venture.

Blackberry

Similar situations occur in modern economic times – let me be bold enough to take a stab at BlackBerry/RIM. I have long loved this company and the devices it offered, in 2005, I got my first Blackberry device – the 7100G. What a device, you could get your emails (a very basic messaging system at that time) direct to your device. And my goodness was the data and subscription expensive.

The enterprise mail client in these devices paved the way to true mobile connectivity. All you needed was a Blackberry and your wallet – it had everything.

Apps were minimal, ringtones boring, but it kept you connected and as a very young entrepreneur, I could hold my own against the adults.

RIM, was years ahead of the competition and continued to develop further, making access to the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) virtually free – with a nominal price that was attractive to the mass market.

RIM enjoyed a great rise from unknown, usually referred to as ugly phone to being a market leader. Today, we are witnessing signs of a decline and possible death of Blackberry, how this mighty enterprise has fallen.

Jobs Return to Apple

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 – the venture was tethering on the brink of collapse, with few people thinking it could survive. Necessity made the environment suitable for great innovation to emerge. Not taking anything from the personalities that made it so.

The birth of the iPod, iTunes and iPhone – brought a time of great growth in the Apple philosophy, share price and brand appeal. Growth that is currently showing signs of decadence, with no new revolutionary technology emerging.

Focus

For any venture to succeed needs a whole lot of dedication, passion and most importantly – focus. Focus on the product, its attributes and ensuring that it is produced as efficiently as possible, offered at a competitive price and made available to client better than anyone else in the market.

With focus though, one must not be blind to opportunities, neglecting what could be the next growth curve in a venture, while fixated on being focused on doing or producing what you are currently producing. This may seem ironic, if you take a good text book on the definition of entrepreneurship it states: “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk” with a high tolerance for ambiguity.

So, in the immortal words of Steve Jobs: “Stay Hungry…” this is the required spirit in ensuring that a business, large or small remains innovative and finds new opportunities in the market.