Like Moths to the Light: Don’t Get Seduced by Innovation

People who work inside companies always want to be part of what’s new. If you look at Apple for example, once they’ve developed a product, 99 percent of the people inside Apple work collectively to deliver on that product.  There are only two or three with the propellers on their heads hiding in some place in the company inventing the next one. 

Being focused on delivering on that outcome is really, really important.  You can get easily distracted by the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. 

I think a lot of times companies get distracted and diluted because they’re continually chasing the shiny light and the moth goes to the light.  And we’re all moths.  We want to go to the light.

The challenge is that what we need are an army of people to deliver on the today.  And I think having a set of people inside the company who are also excited about doing the day-in, day-out relentless focus on delivering on a product that has already been developed is equally important to having the few people that are envisioning, ideating on the product of tomorrow. 

You need to have both, but I think it’s easy to move over to the other side which is we always need the new, the new thing. 

60 Second Reads is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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