Ever heard the phrase “we have always done things this way in this company”? How does that make you feel as someone who sees the need for change, knows the perils of not changing, but is faced with hurdles. What do you do? How do you present a valid case for change? Here are a few starters.
The concept of the comfort zone is well-known but often misunderstood. It’s that psychological state where we feel safe, secure, and in control, surrounded by the familiar and predictable. While this zone provides a sanctuary from stress and anxiety, it can also become a self-imposed cage that hinders growth and innovation. Let’s explore this concept further with two examples and delve into the potential dangers of remaining within it. We’ll also uncover the hidden advantages of stepping outside this zone, both for individuals and organizations.
Examples of the Comfort Zone
Example 1: The Routine Employee
Imagine Sarah, a diligent employee who has worked at the same company for ten years. Her daily routine is well-established: she completes her tasks efficiently, avoids challenging projects, and declines opportunities for professional development. Sarah’s comfort zone is her shield against the uncertainties of new experiences, but it also confines her to a monotonous career path. She’s comfortable but stagnant, missing out on potential promotions and personal growth.
Example 2: The Traditional Business
Consider a small family-owned bookstore that has operated in the same manner for decades. They’ve resisted adopting new technologies, relying solely on in-store sales and word-of-mouth marketing. The bookstore’s comfort zone lies in its traditional business practices. However, as the market shifts towards online retail and digital marketing, the store struggles to attract new customers and faces declining sales.
The Dangers of Staying Within the Comfort Zone
Stagnation and Missed Opportunities
The most significant danger of staying within the comfort zone is stagnation. For individuals like Sarah, this means a lack of career advancement and personal development. For businesses, it can result in missed opportunities for innovation and growth. The world is constantly evolving, and clinging to familiar practices can lead to obsolescence.
Reduced Resilience and Adaptability
Comfort zones can also reduce resilience and adaptability. When faced with unexpected challenges, individuals and organizations that have rarely ventured outside their comfort zones may find it difficult to cope. They are unaccustomed to change and may lack the necessary skills to navigate new situations effectively.
Decline in Motivation and Creativity
Remaining in a comfort zone can lead to a decline in motivation and creativity. The routine becomes mundane, and the lack of new experiences can stifle inspiration. This is particularly detrimental in dynamic fields where innovation is crucial. Without the spark of new challenges, creativity wanes, and both personal and professional growth are hampered.
The Hidden Advantages of Exiting the Comfort Zone
Personal Growth and Development
Stepping outside one’s comfort zone fosters personal growth and development. New experiences challenge us, build resilience, and enhance our skills. For Sarah, this might mean taking on a challenging project or attending a professional development course. These experiences can reignite her passion for her work, open doors to new opportunities, and boost her confidence.
Enhanced Innovation and Competitiveness
For businesses, exiting the comfort zone is essential for innovation and competitiveness. The family-owned bookstore, for example, could explore online sales platforms and digital marketing strategies. By embracing change, they can reach a broader audience, increase sales, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.
Increased Adaptability and Problem-Solving Skills
Leaving the comfort zone enhances adaptability and problem-solving skills. Individuals who regularly face new challenges become more resourceful and better equipped to handle unexpected situations. Organizations that foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement are more resilient and capable of navigating market disruptions.
Greater Fulfillment and Satisfaction
Exiting the comfort zone often leads to greater fulfillment and satisfaction. Achieving new goals and overcoming challenges brings a sense of accomplishment and boosts self-esteem. This positive feedback loop encourages further growth and exploration, creating a dynamic and rewarding personal and professional life.
Conclusion
The comfort zone, while a safe haven, can become a barrier to growth and innovation. The dangers of staying within it include stagnation, reduced resilience, and a decline in motivation and creativity. However, the hidden advantages of stepping outside this zone are significant. For individuals, it fosters personal growth, enhances skills, and brings greater fulfillment. For organizations, it drives innovation, competitiveness, and adaptability. Embracing new experiences and challenges can transform both personal lives and business landscapes, leading to a more vibrant and dynamic future. So, take that leap, venture into the unknown, and discover the immense potential that lies beyond the comfort zone.
Over the last few weeks we have seen individually what roles desirability, viability, and feasibility play in the innovation journey from idea to solution. Today we attempt to bring them together and show a cohesive picture, which hopefully is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Innovation is the lifeblood of progress, driving change and creating solutions that address emerging challenges. However, the journey from a mere idea to a fully realized solution is fraught with complexities. To navigate this path successfully, innovators must balance three critical dimensions: desirability, viability, and feasibility. These pillars form the foundation of any successful innovation, ensuring that solutions are not only imaginative but also practical and sustainable.
Desirability: Meeting Human Needs and Desires
Desirability is the cornerstone of innovation, focusing on whether an idea resonates with its intended users. An innovation must address a genuine need or solve a significant problem to be embraced by its audience. This human-centered approach ensures that the solution aligns with the preferences, values, and emotions of the users.
Understanding the User
To achieve desirability, innovators must deeply understand their target audience. This involves extensive research, including interviews, surveys, and observations, to uncover unmet needs and pain points. By empathizing with users, innovators can tailor their solutions to provide real value.
Iterative Feedback
Desirability also demands an iterative process of prototyping and feedback. Early versions of the product or service should be tested with users, gathering insights to refine and improve the solution. This cycle of testing and learning helps ensure that the final product meets user expectations and delights them.
Viability: Ensuring Business Sustainability
While desirability focuses on the user's perspective, viability addresses the business aspect of innovation. An idea must be economically sustainable and align with the organization’s strategic goals to move beyond the concept stage.
Market Potential
Assessing market potential is crucial for viability. Innovators must analyze market size, growth trends, and competitive landscape to ensure that there is a sufficient market for their solution. A thorough market analysis helps in understanding the economic viability and the potential for profitability.
Business Model
A robust business model is essential for viability. Innovators must define how the solution will generate revenue and ensure that the costs of development, production, and delivery are covered. This includes considering various revenue streams, pricing strategies, and cost structures to create a sustainable business case.
Feasibility: Technical and Operational Practicality
Feasibility examines whether an idea can be realistically implemented with the available resources and technology. It ensures that the innovation is not only desirable and viable but also practical and achievable.
Technical Feasibility
Innovators must assess the technical requirements of their solution. This involves evaluating whether the necessary technology exists, if it can be developed within the project's constraints, and whether the team has the technical expertise required. Feasibility studies often include technical prototypes and pilot tests to validate assumptions and identify potential challenges.
Operational Feasibility
Operational feasibility considers the practical aspects of implementing the solution. This includes the availability of resources, the capability of the organization to deliver the solution, and the integration with existing systems and processes. Innovators must ensure that the solution can be scaled and maintained efficiently over time.
Balancing the Triad for Successful Innovation
Achieving success in innovation requires a delicate balance of desirability, viability, and feasibility. An idea that is highly desirable but not viable or feasible will struggle to sustain itself. Conversely, a feasible and viable solution that does not meet user needs will fail to gain traction.
Holistic Approach
A holistic approach to innovation involves considering all three dimensions from the outset. This integrated perspective ensures that the solution is not only innovative but also practical and sustainable. Cross-functional teams that include designers, engineers, and business strategists can collaborate to address each aspect effectively.
Continuous Iteration
Innovation is not a linear process but an iterative journey. Continuous feedback loops involving real users and stakeholders help refine the solution across all dimensions. By constantly testing, learning, and adapting, innovators can navigate the complexities of bringing an idea to life.
Conclusion
In the innovation journey, desirability, viability, and feasibility are not isolated checkpoints but interconnected pillars that support the entire process. By ensuring that a solution is desirable to users, viable for the business, and feasible to implement, innovators can transform ideas into impactful, lasting solutions. Embracing this triad approach increases the likelihood of success and drives meaningful progress in the ever-evolving landscape of innovation.
Last week I wrote about viability. Today we focus on the support ecosystem and infrastructure, and talk about Feasibility.
Feasibility focuses on the supporting eco-system and infrastructure, to determine whether or not the right conditions exist for our product/solution to be deployed and used effectively. Typical questions we answer here include ‘is this right infrastructure available?’, ‘if not, is our product/solution disruptive enough to push for the infrastructure to be created?’, ‘will the lack of supporting infrastructure put people off using our product/solution?’
For the idea to succeed as a product or solution and become an innovation, it will have to be utilised as intended by the target audience identified in the desirability stage. Quite often it will require external enablers such as support infrastructure and an eco-system.
For example, when the Internal Combustion engine was invented, and motor cars were developed on that basis, the support infrastructure required was availability of fuel to power the engines.
Similarly, when the electric bulb was invented, a prerequisite would have been the availability of electricity, without which, the bulb would be useless.
Now, the other possibility is that if the supporting infrastructure or ecosystem doesn’t yet exist, the product/solution must be impactful enough to enable the creation of such an ecosystem.
Steve Jobs’ showmanship is well documented on the Internet. Who doesn’t remember his keynote, back in 2007, when Apple launched the first ever iPhone? If you look it up on Google or YouTube, you’ll see a clip of this recording in which he presents ‘an iPod, a phone and an internet communication device’. Do you remember the state of mobile internet in 2007? Now, what happened in the aftermath of the iPhone launch? Two things happened:
So, the point I am making here is, if a support infrastructure and an eco-system don’t exist, your product/solution has to have so much of an impact that it does what iPhone did to the Internet and mobile communications.
As a summary, feasibility assessment of the idea is about ensuring your idea has support infrastructure and an eco-system to enable rapid adoption at scale or that your idea has so much of an impact, it triggers the generation of this infrastructure and eco-system.
At the start of the month I wrote about Innovation being a journey from Epiphany to Empowerment. I then followed it up with the evaluation of ideas against desirability. Today we focus on the company, and talk about Viability.
Viability focuses only on the organisation or the company that has come up with the idea. It’s a test with an inward focus. Typical questions we answer here include ‘is this the right product for us?’, ‘do we have the resources (time, money, skills,) to do this?’, ‘will this have a nett positive impact or nett negative impact on the company?’
This is an impartial and unbiased assessment of the company’s capabilities with regards to technology, financial strength, culture, perception, resources, upstream and downstream partnerships and the impact of said product on the company amongst other things. Let’s look at the first three of these items briefly.
Technological Capability: The two focus areas here are technical and technological expertise, and the application of this technology. For example, the technological capability/expertise of McDonald’s is preparing and serving food, but the area of application is in the fast food sector as opposed to gourmet dining.
Financial Strength: This is not just the ability to invest money into the venture, but the ability to survive the failure of the product/solution with minimal damage to the bank balance. For example, when Sony released the Betamax format for video recording and playback, they were beaten by the VHS format introduced by JVC. However, despite this failure, Sony survived.
Culture: Innovation doesn’t happen by accident. Innovation is a result of the culture of companies which enable, encourage and empower the people to express themselves without fear of being looked down upon. For example, it’s well documented that 3M has a policy which states ca.30% of its revenue has to come from products developed in the last 3 years and that employees are allowed to work on their ideas for up to 15% of the time.
This was the third and final of three busy weeks and this week’s highlight was the TiE UK North event that we held in Manchester on Tuesday the 18th. TiE UK North, the Manchester based Chapter of TiE Global hosted a road show/curtain raiser to the TiE Global Summit, which is being held in Bangalore, India in December this year.
Given that last week was London Tech Week, we knew a lot of our members from the various TiE chapters in India would be attending. So we decided to host this curtain raiser event to the TiE Global Summit, here in Manchester. Why?
Shoosmiths Manchester magnanimously hosted us, thanks to Vikas Shah.
We were also fortunate to have Mr. Aman Bansal, Head of the Chancery at the Consulate General of India speak to the audience. He spoke about the work TiE has been doing at a global level to foster entrepreneurship, and also the landscape in India, which is being courted by everyone, everywhere, as an investment destination and a market opportunity.
Naomi Timperley then presented the Manchester ecosystem to the attendees and the various initiatives and accelerators that are active in the city-region.
I then presented about TiE at a global scale, and what we do at TiE UK North. Mentoring, Incubation, Investment, Networking and Education are the five pillars of TiE by which we drive entrepreneurship. I spoke about the origins of TiE in Silicon Valley, in 1992 and today how we're 61 chapters strong and all over the world! Every entrepreneur created is one less person in the job-seekers pool and one more person in the job-givers pool. The more jobs they create, the more will unemployment go down, and the more will standards and quality of live go up. Entrepreneurs contribute to overall socio-economic well-being and growth, and facilitate an environment of shared prosperity, therefore adding value across all human societal constructs.
Srihari Bhatt from our Bangalore chapter laid out the grand vision for TiE Global Summit spread across four chapters in the state of Karnataka in South India. The sheer numbers are staggering and this is likely to be the Olympics of entrepreneurship.
Anne Lawlor of Journey Protector spoke about her experience of winning the TiE UK North finals of the TiE Global Women’s competition and the visibility and exposure Journey Protector got as a direct consequence of participation and travelling to Singapore for the TiE Global Summit 2023.
The formal event was brought to a close by Ashok Kallumpram and Tariq Marfani, two of the founding members of TiE UK North, and current board members.
A lot of conversations happened and there is a lot to look forward to as the days, weeks and months progress!
This was the second of three busy weeks and started of with a trip to London with a delegation of TiE UK North members and organisations meeting the Hon. Minister for Information Technology of the state of Karnataka (my home state). TiE UK North was represented by yours truly (Equitus and Journey Protector), Ravi Kumar (Cyberliver), Abhishek Ghosh (Praeferre), Philip Pentone Robinson (Pentone Family). Also joining us was Af Malhotra (Tech India Advocates, and DEI).
We discussed a lot of things including the TiE Global Summit 2024 in Bangalore. Highlights of the chat included the profile of all these organisations, their activities, and their interest in Karnataka. We also paid a visit to the London Tech Week, where we had the opportunity to meet and talk with a delegation of entrepreneurs from various parts of India and the world.
Equitus: Industrial design and engineering, green hydrogen (complete end-to-end green hydrogen solutions including production, transportation + storage and applications) for e-mobility and alternative energy, and engineering procurement and construction management, helping companies address challenges around net-zero and decarbonisation aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Journey Protector (Anne Lawlor): Ireland’s first tech company to be fully B-Corp certified. AI and cloud driven sensor array that addresses the critical challenges of security, efficiency, and environmental sustainability in global logistics, particularly at strategic points like ports.
Cyberliver (Ravi Kumar): A revolutionary patented, digital medicine platform, first mover in treating complex liver disease conditions, leverages AI and machine learning to predict and prevent liver disease.
Praeferre (Abhishek Ghosh): A data security and privacy platform for organisations better managing their regulatory obligation, mitigating risk and ensuring ethical operations. The multi award winning one stop GRC platform automates sensitive data protection and compliance for business while promoting data security and privacy.
Pentone Family (Philip Pentone Robinson): A University of Manchester spinout, creates innovative alcoholic beverages and brands. Inspired by their forefather Antonio Pentone’s gallantry at sea, saving 28 men in a shipwreck and storm in the Indian Ocean, their world class artisan spirits and world first naturally low calorie full strength aperitifs are set to take the world by storm.
First Step Group and LATOS (Harinder Dhaliwal and Mike Carlin): A property data centre specialist company actively expanding our portfolio of Hyper and AI data centres for global operators such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The demand for such facilities is undersupplied globally and having built the relationships they are well placed to take advantage of locations globally.
Tech India Advocates (Ani Kaprekar and Af Malhotra): Formally Launched Dec ‘21 in the UK, with a rapidly growing India-UK community of 3000+ Tech leaders, CEOs, innovators, investors, thought leaders, championing #NewIndia #Tech (hidden gems, emerging tech ecosystems) in the western world, starting with the UK.
It was also an absolute pleasure to meet Vishwanath Panyam and spend some time with him.
A note of gratitude to Madan Padaki, President of TiE Bangalore for making this happen, the Hon. Minister and his team for taking the time to meet us, Jagdish Patankar, CEO of MM Active, and Sanjeev Gupta CEO of KDEM for all the comms from Bangalore, and of course Ravi Narayan, whose presence and involvement were a huge boost.
Then on Thursday, I was back in London, this time at the Indian High Commission for an event titled “New India: Beyond Borders: Linking London and India's Tech Hubs”, expertly moderated by by Janet Coyle CBE, Managing Director, Grow London. There were numerous existing friends Ravi Kumar, Ani Kaprekar, Af Malhotra, and a lot of new friends.
A lot of amazing and inspiring conversations happened with. No doubt we will keep the conversations alive.