Breakthrough innovation requires you to become comfortable being uncomfortable

“Almost all great products were born in anger.”

This bit of wisdom was shared by a panelist at a Chicago Product Management Association (“ChiPMA”) event. ChiPMA is group that helps software and digital product managers hone skills to build successful product businesses.

This statement struck me, because I found that the products that I’ve managed throughout my career all started with some mix of anger, frustration, or annoyance with the current state of something.

Anger cuts through safe thinking.

The statement also made me think about the products that failed. Often, these products were also born of frustration, but they never took off. They didn’t really fix the frustration. Then, they blended into the background of alternatives because they failed to differentiate.

Yes, almost all great products were born in anger, but almost all once great - but now dead - products died trying to please everyone.

All great products stay great because of healthy paranoia

20 years ago, when I first became a software product manager, I had the good fortune of losing. I managed a product in the flowcharting space in the late 1990s when Visio was about to be crowned as the undisputed winner.

I was lucky that I lost.

Losing forced me to learn about markets: my product was once pretty unique, and I had loyal customers who were dismayed with my changes but willing to explain in detail about what made their lives easier.

Losing forced me to read: Kotler, Ries and Trout, Moore, Shapiro and Varian, Christensen and Raynor - all of these authors gave me some revelation that changed my thinking.

Losing was painful. I wasn’t accustomed to losing. The pain of losing helped me to be vigilant of the big competitor. But little players beat me, too: I needed to be paranoid to anticipate a new angry entrant.

I was lucky because I learned that a great, angry idea isn’t enough for lasting success. More breakthroughs are needed.

Breakthrough innovation and continued success is a by-product of a way of thinking: that there are always others who are angry with your way of solving the problem, and one of them will disrupt your business if you don’t do it first.

Finding breakthroughs with innovation rules

Through losing, I gained a healthy paranoia. But I still needed to find the patterns that are likely to lead to breakthroughs. Paranoia needs an outlet: effective action.

As a product manager, you need “innovation rules” - a set of questions that help you think through and identify the breakthrough potential of any situation. Paranoia by itself leads to paralysis. Paranoia with a toolkit of potential actions helps you to find new possibilities for addressing the problem you are trying to solve.

Before going any further, it is critical to stress that there is a fundamental difference between the kind of thinking required for breakthrough innovation and the thinking that leads to incremental innovation.

There is a fundamental difference between "breakthrough" innovation and incremental innovation, and there are rules for finding breakthrough ideas. Incremental innovation delivers stair-step improvements that are important but relied on too often.

---

Incremental innovation - or sustaining innovation - delivers stair-step improvements that align with what the market expects, add polish, and are not meant to disrupt a market. Incremental innovation is critical for padding a lead. Incremental ideas are stair steps, each taking you a little closer to the next level.

On the other hand, breakthroughs - or disruptive innovation - are the ideas that change or create a market. This sort of innovation creates behemoths - see the Visual Capitalist chart that shows the rise of tech over the last 16 years, capturing the top 5 spots in 2016 in by market cap.

Breakthroughs are needed in smaller tech markets, and they are needed outside of tech: as digital businesses disrupt traditional models, traditional businesses need to reinvent to survive.

Technology is moving faster and faster. To thrive, focus on your ability to change anything fast as long as your changes serve your reason for existing - the anger that created your business in the first place.

Learn to be uncomfortable in comfortable situations

It’s not surprising that product managers - at all levels - often use incremental innovation only. Incremental innovation has it's own value and challenges, but it is easier - you can collect input and prioritize a backlog.

Breakthrough innovation hides. Some breakthroughs live side-by-side with your incremental ideas. Some breakthroughs have incremental names - all feature and no problem. Some incremental innovation looks like it is a breakthrough, but its time has passed. Some breakthroughs are taboo in your corporate culture.

If you’re not uncomfortable, then you probably don’t have a breakthrough.

The next post introduces 3 types of tests for disruption.