It is truly rewarding to be able to create products that make a difference in other people’s lives and in the end that is probably what will mean the most. However, we all have a little, “what’s in it for me,” when we do things and certainly money is an important part of that but you can’t beat the benefit of creating a new innovative product that makes your own life better as well. At the innovation company IDEO they talk about making your own “BUG” list, a list of things that bug you. Sometimes that might seem counterproductive to focus on things that bug you rather than just trying to be tolerant and accepting of those irritants. But those things that bug you are likely to bug someone else and that bug list can be a treasure of opportunity. Let’s face it there is a lot of time and energy needed to create a truly useful and innovative product and if it will revolutionize your own life, then all that time and energy will likely be coupled with a passion that makes an enormous difference to the process. I recently read an interview in Success Magazine with Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote the wildly popular productivity software, and his belief is that it takes something you deeply care about to be able to create something truly remarkable. Some product ideas may look like a slam dunk and make total business sense but if you are not excited about the product and the problem it solves it will be much harder to bring it to market. Remember that innovation is not about just great ideas for products but about all the steps after the great ideas that bring it to market and you will need lots of energy for those steps!
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