These days, everybody's talking about innovation. But, what are people really doing about it? It kind of reminds of surfing.
Lot's of folks talk about surfing and being a surfers. But, there's a big difference between sitting on the beach, waxing elequently about wave shapes, board shapes and gnarly rides and getting out in the water. It doesn't matter how good you are. The act of getting in the water is what makes you a surfer. It's all about doing, trying and failing. A lot.
I wrote a bit about my experience of learning surf in Flipped:
A few years ago, I sold my company I had owned for ten years and took an extended sabbatical. I went to Mexico to learn how to surf. Surfing has taught me that there is no substitution to repetitive practice. Many of the lessons I’ve learned from the sport of surfing are at the core of this book. Surfing is one of the iconic alternative sports representing not only the youth culture but also the beach culture. Many companies have used surfing to leverage their brands into household names in every town across the country. Everybody loves the image of surfing. Yet, I’ve discovered there are very few people who actually surf. Why is that? There is one simple answer: surfing is hard. I have a personal theory about surfing. It takes riding a thousand waves to become a surfer. It doesn’t matter if you catch 20 waves a day for 50 days or one wave a day for a thousand days; you just can’t get around the experience of learning the hard way.
If you want to be an innovator how will you ride a thousand waves? Start innovating. Start doing and making.
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