Welcome to the Madness
Why does everyone talk about innovation? Why is it so important? The current of the river of life will always try to pull you towards the middle, towards complacency and mediocrity. This is true for every person and every company. It’s a problem because other companies that don’t give in to that current will eclipse you.
Companies and organizations tend to be comfortable with the tried and true. But the audience, i.e., your customers, are attracted to what’s new, different, and better. The best tool you have for swimming against that current of mediocrity is innovation. To grow and become a great company, a great entrepreneur, you must actively embrace it. You can become pretty good without it, but not great. You must take a shot.
And to be very innovative, you have to be a bit crazy. You need a touch of the madness. And it doesn’t mean to just be a little crazy in what you think up; it also means you must have a mad enthusiasm, a crazy sense of purpose and devotion and perseverance. A touch of the madness in how you create it, implement it, and make it thrive.
How to do it? Three steps: CREATE—Find the Essence. ASK—Anybody Anywhere for Anything You Want. PLAY—It All Like a Game.
#1 Create
First, create a great idea with a touch of the madness. Simple, right? A touch of the madness gives you some guidelines for how to be more creative and innovative. They are: •Find the essence of your idea. •Know your target customer/audience. •Let technology serve your idea, not the other way around. •Once you have created your idea, never let go. And do it all with a mad ire in your belly, never-give-up mindset.
Essence Of An Idea
When the author decided to make Mortal Kombat into a movie, everyone told him, he was crazy, and his career would be over. “You can’t make video games into movies,” and every prior attempt had failed. It had never been done successfully at that point.
But here is a secret, he never thought he was making a video game into a movie. Instead, he thought he was making the essence of that video game—the thing that made it so successful—into a movie. Think of a game or intellectual property as a pyramid. The game to him was not the apex of the intellectual property pyramid. It was one rung down. The apex is the magic pixie dust that made Mortal Kombat such a great video game.
He always thought with Mortal Kombat it was empowerment, wrapped in a visually stunning package, of course, but empowerment nonetheless. Martial arts teaches that you don’t have to be the biggest and the strongest to win, if you focus, study, and do the right thing. And the game really reinforces that.
Audience
Who do you work for? Your boss, your foreman, your editor, your board? No, you work for your audience. For your customers. That is a huge responsibility.
Ideas Drive Tech
Let your idea drive your technology, not the other way around. See the Eiffel Tower in your mind, then figure out how to build it, versus seeing lots of metal joints and figuring out an idea for them.
This is where things like the metaverse come into play. The metaverse, for example, doesn’t really exist yet, as I write this. The question is, should it exist—for you?! Only if you have a great idea that the metaverse will help you bring to your audience.
Hold On To Your Idea; Never Let It Go
Once you have gone through these first three steps, and now have your great idea, there is one more step. Hold on for dear life. Never give up. Everyone—like the current of that river—will try to dissuade you. Do not let them. Be bold and big if you’d like, but once you lock on, never lose focus. Just do not give up on it.
This is really the most important step, because talent—a great idea—is only half the battle. This is the other half.
#2 Ask
Now you have created your great idea and your unwavering faith in it. What’s next? Second way to cultivate a touch of the madness: ASK.
Ask For What You Want
ASK ANYBODY for ANYTHING you want, ANYWHERE. The easiest way to get anything you want is to ASK. Call anybody; ask for anything in pursuit of your goals. No such thing as being shy. “No” is just the beginning.
What do you do when asking seems to be going nowhere, when you are tired and running out of juice to ask even one more time? Ask again. This is incredibly important, relatively simple, and almost no one does it. You be the ones who do. Ask.
Pick someone you want to know. It could be someone famous or someone at work or someone in your extended circle of contacts. Figure out why, of course—what you would ask them—and just reach out. When the author first started doing this, in college, it was much harder—you had a telephone or a written-and-mailed letter. Now, with email, LinkedIn, texting, DMs, it is so much easier. So why not give it a try? This week. What do you have to lose?
#3 Play
If you can play your innovation and creativity at work like a game, you will do better.
Now, we all think of playing like it’s a game as not taking it seriously. I doubt champion athletes would agree. A heavyweight boxer or NFL quarterback or tennis player at Wimbledon takes their “game” seriously. But it doesn’t mean they don’t play it like one.
If you can see professional challenges that way, you will approach them with a more open mind, like when you were a kid and came up with more creative, out-of-the-box solutions. That’s innovation.
Live In A State Of Play
If you want to be in good shape, you exercise all the time, not just the day before you go to the doctor. If you want to be anxiety free, you mediate all the time, not just when you worry. Similarly, if you want to be the most innovative you can and add a touch of the madness to your life, the author suggests you try to live in a state of play all the time.
Dogs do and it works for them. They view everything as a game and the are the happiest creatures on earth.