(You Don’t Have to) Be An Original by Darren Hardy

 Innovation doesn’t always have to be a new, novel, big or revolutionary idea.
To me innovation is as simple as looking at any existing product, service, problem or process and determining if there is a better way.
Additionally, innovation doesn’t necessarily require some creative epiphany or even originality. It can simply be transferring existing ideas, procedures, or technologies that have already be proven useful elsewhere and applying them to your industry, company, life or to your particular situation.

Innovation is as simple as transferring existing ideas proven useful elsewhere and applying them to new situations.

Personally, I believe there are no real original ideas or thoughts. Or let’s just say, it’s extremely rare—Einstein and Stephen Hawking rare. And you don’t want to hold out waiting for one of those to occur to you.
Everything we know and have come to know has come from some form of existing knowledge. There are just new ways of understanding and packaging existing knowledge, thoughts and ideas and then applying them freshly, and maybe even uniquely, to new situations.
I think of myself as an “importer and translator of ideas.” I am always looking around me, everywhere, for where I can find, borrow or pinch an idea and apply it to a situation of my own. I look for something that someone else has already proven to work, but no one has thought of applying that same idea, principle or method to something else—maybe totally unrelated.
A great example of this is when Apple was trying to innovate the personal computer. Most manufacturers produced beige or gray metal boxes. They were designed as merely a functional piece of equipment instead of a classy and aesthetically pleasing creative tool.
As an innovative idea, the Apple iMac design team wanted to make the computer’s shell colorful and transparent. They wanted to shatter the status quo by using gentle curves over harsh corners, and vibrant color over dull neutrality.
But in trying to mass-produce the new design they ran into a multitude of manufacturing problems. No one in the electronics industry had manufactured plastic that was hard enough to bear the demands of a computer casing, while also being translucent. In each attempt the manufacturing process suffered spotting and streaking. They needed an original idea, to solve something that had never been attempted, or at least, in their industry.
So the Apple design team started to look outside of the electronics industry. Lo and behold they found themselves at a CANDY manufacturer. There they learned about the mass-production tinting processes candy manufacturers used, as standard process really, to create their colorful hard candy exterior.
Apple’s lead designer Jonathan Ive said, “We can now do things with plastic that we were previously told were impossible.” But to make it possible they had to “borrow” an idea from another industry and apply it to theirs. And in doing so they revolutionized their industry.
So here’s what I want you to do to revolutionize your industry, your life or a problem you are dealing with right now.
Step One: What do you want to innovate?
Is it a product, a sales process, a customer service process, an administrative process, project management process, a behavioral process, a communication process, etc.? Pick one.
Step Two: Outline your desired outcome or intent.
Then write out the 1, 2 or 3 hurdles or constraints holding progress back.
Step Three: Reach out to 3 to 5 people in unrelated industries.
Tell them your intended outcome and what your identified constraints are, and ask if they have run into similar challenges in their own industry and how they solved it. Find out what innovations in their own product, process or life produced the kind of breakthroughs your intended outcome is after. You are likely to get the idea you need, and you didn’t have to think it up yourself.
Even the late, great Steve Jobs was criticized for not really inventing anything new. Jobs didn’t invent the mouse or the graphical user interface. The iPod was certainly not the first MP3 player, the iPhone not the first smartphone, and the iPad was not the first notepad device.
What Steve did was take existing products or ideas and make them better. He reinvented the way they were put together and the contexts in which they were inserted into popular culture. And as a result, he is considered one of the most creative and innovative people who has ever lived. Interesting isn’t it?
So remember, all you have to do is look around you and borrow what has already been proven to work. Your genius is in staying aware and then translating those ideas to your situations.
Steal from anywhere that fuels your imagination…
Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs and billboards. Steal from those things that speak directly to your soul.
If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it.

Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.

In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”