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Innovation is actually easy (and benchmarking stinks)!


Tom Peters’ short video clip 'Innovation is actually easy!' from roughly a decade ago is still a must-see and compulsory for innovators, wherever they work for and work on. His advices are crystal clear and crucial. First, cherish and hang out with the mavericks that see and think differently: “Hang out with weird and thou shalt become more weird, hang out with dull and thou shalt become more dull, it is a simple as that”. Second, take wide-angled visions, listen to the complaing customers and look at the fringes of the market ‘where the newbies try to make a living’. Third, avoid benchmarking: “I hate benchmarking, benchmarking is stupid … because we pick the current industry leader, and then we launch a five-year programme, the goal of which is to be as good as whoever was best five years ago, five years from now, which to me is not exactly an Olympian aspiration”, thereby referring to Seth Godin: “You can not be remarkable by following someone else who’s remarkable. … The leader is the leader precisely because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken - so it’s no longer remarkable when you decide to do it”.


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