Innovation Blog

Mantra for your Life?

By Shlomo Maital

 Great organizations have great mantras.  Mantras are 2-3 word slogans that capture the vision, mission and goals of the organization.  For example:  Walt Disney (“Make People Happy”), or Apple (“Think Different”).

  It occurs to me that people, too, need mantras.  Mantras help us zero in on what really matters to us, what our vision is, and why we are placed here on earth.  Whether or not we share the mantra with others, a strong mantra helps us focus our own energies and vision, at a time when it is exceedingly easy to scatter them.

   What is your mantra?

   Here is mine, one that came to me very late in the game.

   Build a creative business, not just a creative product.

  Too long.  How about:  BUILD BUSINESSES, NOT INVENTIONS.

   The basic idea:  Many of the managers, entrepreneurs and students I’ve worked with, during the past 43 years, especially, those trained in engineering and science,  think that innovation is primarily about inventing a better widget. 

    And I’ve seen many such ‘widgets’, embodying magical new technology, that fail, because they lack solid marketing, sales, operations, production, finance and HR management.

    Build a business.  Learn how.  Pour equal creativity into the business design as you pour into the product.  Innovate everywhere in your business, not just in the product. And create an innovation process, so that new ideas pour out constantly, and not only in the realm of your product.  Make Version 2.0 apply to your business designs, not just your software product. 

     This is my mantra.   This is what I now do in life, as an educator.[1]

     What is YOUR mantra?  

[1]  S. Maital, D.V.R. Seshadri, Innovation Management:  Strategies, Tools and Concepts for Growth and Profit (SAGE, 2007).   Forthcoming in Hebrew, April 2010.