A December article in the Wall Street Journal carried the headline “The Economy’s Hidden Problem: We’re Out of Big Ideas.” Interesting article, but I disagree with the premise. I don’t think it’s big ideas or even new ideas that we need. What we need is to reinvent the things we’ve already tried.
That’s the economy’s real hidden problem: the unseen (and therefore untapped) opportunity in existing ideas. Leaders with an innovation mentality see opportunity in everything. And everything includes ideas that aren’t new or big.
Many people don’t see that because they don’t enjoy the tough part of taking ideas all the way to the end. We’ve become complacent looking for immediate success, not understanding what’s required to succeed in a world where you constantly need to reinvent yourself.
Aza Steel is a leader who sees opportunity. He is co-founder and CEO of education software company GoGuardian, and in 2016 he was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in the education category. Steel and I had a discussion about unseen opportunities, and he shared a view similar to mine about the nature of ideas: “To me, innovation isn’t really coming up with new ideas,” Steel explained. “You’re not going to have a new thought. You’re going to combine a few other peoples’ thoughts in a slightly novel way. I find it so exhilarating to see these crevices of innovation that the world has left.”
Seeing the Crevices
His own entrepreneurial adventure began outside a UCLA dining hall when a friend’s laptop was stolen. Suddenly realizing how vulnerable he’d be if his own computer were stolen, he found an app that tracks computers, but he couldn’t afford it. So he hunkered down for 48 hours, learned JavaScript, built his own theft-recovery tool as a Chrome extension, and released it online. In a few months, it had 10,000 users. Not bad, for a Sociology major.
A school district reached out to him in need of help with newly deployed Chromebooks. Steel started by helping them with theft recovery and continued by helping with any other issues that came up. He’d call users and ask what problems they were having, then stay up all night programming a solution, then move on to the next problem. It was a pivotal time in education as more and more districts adopted this new technology. Steel’s entrepreneurial spirit obviously got a great workout.
As a result, GoGuardian evolved from theft recovery to a mission…