Summary

The article advocates for creators to innovate by borrowing and adapting ideas from successful businesses in different niches rather than attempting to create entirely new products from scratch.

Abstract

The author emphasizes the importance of creators being innovators but cautions against the pitfall of striving for 100% originality, which often leads to failure. Instead, the article suggests that true innovation lies in the ethical "stealing" of ideas, which involves creatively borrowing and repurposing concepts that have proven successful in other industries. This approach ensures that new products are not just slight improvements over existing ones but are disruptive and appealing to an already established market. The author uses Apple as an example of a company that excelled by adapting existing ideas rather than inventing entirely new products. The article encourages creators to look beyond their immediate competition and draw inspiration from various sources to create something extraordinary that resonates with their target audience.

Opinions

Creators should not aim for complete originality, as it often results in failure.
The concept of "stealing" ideas is presented as a strategic and ethical way to innovate by borrowing and adapting successful concepts from other niches.
Improving upon existing products by ten percent is deemed insufficient and leads to mediocrity.
Successful innovation involves studying and incorporating strategies from unrelated industries to create disruptive products.
The article suggests that the market does not always know what it wants, and it is the creator's role to present them with innovative solutions that have been adapted from elsewhere.
The author criticizes the notion of trying to outdo direct competition, advocating instead for dominating the market by offering superior, cross-industry innovations.
The article implies that the most successful companies, like Apple, have built their empires not on inventing new categories of products but on perfecting and combining existing ideas in novel ways.
Creators are encouraged to enroll in a free email masterclass offered by the author to learn more about building a tribe and marketing their innovations effectively.

Only the Insane Attempt to Create New Products from Scratch

If you want your new idea to fly, it’s best to borrow from what already works

As creators it’s our duty and our calling to be innovators, problem solvers, trail-blazers, and watchmen. To me, there’s no better calling than helping people rise from their current state, to a higher state, using our best work as a tool.

But the innovator’s dilemma is alive and well.

How are we supposed to create new stuff? Sure, we can write a bunch of ideas on a napkin, sneak-away to our garage and start the next Apple, but that’s the crazy way. People don’t create well in vacuums. The voice in our creative minds is not always the voice of reason. Nor the voice of our market.

When we try to be 100 innovative, we’re on the path of 100% failure.

So, what’s the solution? Are we supposed to be the next copycat in our niche? Do we ride the coattails of the successful entrepreneur before us? Do we wait until our market asks for the perfect solution? Or do we try everything and see what sticks?

The answer is “no” to everything.

As Austin Kleon tells us, real artists steal. If we want to start a business that will be successful from the get, or develop a product with a high chance our tribe will devour it — we’ve got to steal.

Now, before you get your keyboard twisted, stealing isn’t robbery. Creative stealing is a sexy way of borrowing and making something yours. We won’t break any laws, step on any toes, break plates, or hurt feelings. What we will do is mainline your chance of making something great, that sells, to people who already want it.

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How to steal — the ethical way

When we steal ideas, we run, in the opposite direction of our niche. We become secret agents for our business, and spy in places no one thought before.

Our niche has its successful solutions.

Improving on what’s already available is a sure-shot train ride to mediocre-ville. We don’t do average. We want extraordinary. So, instead of doing the old ten-percent improvement trick (where you make a new product by improving-upon something by ten-percent), we’ll blow our niche from the ocean.

Instead, to find our ultimate innovation, we’ll steal from successful businesses in other niches that have nothing to do with us.

Let’s say you have startup company that sells custom artwork for dorms, offices, and homes. Maybe you’ve got a sweet app where customers can take pictures, import stock photos, and make their own, huge wall art, all from their phone, without leaving your ecosystem. Click, play, pay, get.

These apps already exist.

Therefore, you’ve got a proven concept with an established tribe. Cool. Check one. However, the last thing you should do is try to one-up your competition. What you need to do is dominate them so badly all their customers will want to become your customers. Your innovation will be so good, the tribe can’t ignore you.

We go on a spy mission. Maybe we check-out successful dry cleaners and study how their online scheduling works. We look at cab companies, or physical art dealers. Maybe we check-out flower delivery companies, see how they up-sell and use high holiday prices to boost their slow seasons.

We steal from places they’d least expect us.

This is fun, by the way. Every industry has top performers. Every industry does something we can borrow or mirror. Not every sweet idea will work in your business, but concepts can be borrowed and tweaked.

In our art example, maybe you borrow a piece of innovation from a food delivery truck, a knitting company, and a law firm. Think of how disruptive those tools would be if none of your innovations existed in your niche.

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Short-cut your path

Sure, it feels noble to take the hard way, but only crazy people try to be 100% innovative. We want to sell our stuff to an existing market, right (at least, I hope you do)? So, we’ve got to present our market with stuff that already works elsewhere.

What is innovation and disruption anyway.

Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player, the cell phone, the laptop, the WiFi router, on-demand TV, music downloads, digital book sales, or anything they’ve ever released.

What Jobs did was steal from European design, Japanese packaging, and simple user interfaces. While the guy was famous for saying how silly it was to ask your customers what they want, he was a master at stealing from elsewhere and disrupting the world with his packaged changes.

You can steal too.

Why work your face-off, only to find your innovative idea was terrible? Wheres the nobility in that? I’m a grinder just as much as the next person, but even I know it’s insane to create new things from scratch.

Now it’s your turn.

We’re waiting for you.

(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers.)

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.