I recently had a chat with a group of entrepreneurs and one question I got asked was about differentiating persistence and stubbornness. This is an important question, here I share my response…
Innovation is messy, it just doesn’t happen in a straight line. The entrepreneurs, innovators, anybody who achieves great outcomes, have many traits in common which help them push through the ups and downs: stubbornness and persistence.
You can’t predict the future, you have to create it. Still, a main component of doing innovation is forecasting; understanding what drives the future. This is something I get asked about a lot, and don’t claim to be a futurist. What I do know is that one of the key skills of the future is imagining future scenarios; futuring.
Rebels, misfits, renegades, heretics or troublemakers whatever you call them, are commonly seen as difficult to work with. Why? Because their strengths (driven, talented, smart and impatient in achieving outcomes) can sometimes make them come across as assholes and go rogue.
Innovation is hard, it doesn’t happen by following a tried and true cookie cutter approach. It often begins when someone begins to think and act differently, usually in isolation, from the rest of an organization; challenging convention.
Society loves experts! Why? Because people are highly persuaded by authority; and being an expert is considered being an authority. But experts are human, and therefore are fallible in their judgment; especially when it comes to predicting the future.
Anyone who achieves great things in any domain has the courage to be wrong. This means you’re willing to go against convention and look like an idiot. This is one characteristic that separates game-changers from everyone else; and it’s very uncommon.
We’ve all, of course, read about the spectacular success of startups. It’s impossible to escape the amazing tales of people starting with an idea in a garage (think Apple) and growing it into a billion-dollar global business. But a startup isn’t as easy as those well-known stories might have you think. There’s a little bit of luck and a whole lot of other influences at play.
