Confidence, resilience, and cell phones

The truth is, in the practice of innovation, uncertainty is everywhere.

Innovation is practiced by humans, who are fallible creatures.

As innovators we are going to get things wrong, therefore our confidence will be temporary and intermittent – like spotty cell reception in the 1990’s.

That all sounds pretty sad and defeatist but for anyone who has moments of self-doubt or who has just made a mistake and don’t know where to go, it is important to know this is completely normal.

We talk about how good innovators are visionaries or how investors want a confident person to lead the start up. These attributes are the top of the list of “must haves” but I want to champion another and often overlooked attribute – resilience.

How did you find yourself in this situation?

You have had your idea (a little like the launch of the early cell phones) you are ecstatic and congratulate yourself on how it is going to change the world.

Cue some setbacks, you struggle to create a prototype or get some scathing feedback from a VC (customers begin to complain they can’t receive calls in some locations, or that they are too heavy to conveniently carry around) and you begin to get overwhelmed with the situation.

What do you do…?

When confidence and vision have gone on PTO, Resilience has you covered.

Resilience

In the face of challenges, set backs and pivots it is hard to remain steadfastly confident. The course we thought we would take changes and impacts our vision. However, it is resilience that allows us to find the new path to continue to refine an idea or make adjustments, based on feedback. Being resilient allows us to have something to fall back on while we rebuild our confidence or adjust our vision. It is the flexibility of resilience, proving to ourselves that we can do difficult things, that gives rise to confidence in ourselves and our business.

 

The improvement in cell phones has been filled with set backs, changing customer needs and upheaval[1] but with resilience it has been truly transformative to how we stay connect as a society and even how we do business.

[1] The history of cell phones: A decade-by-decade timeline (androidauthority.com)

 

Aine Rice, Innovation Framework Manager, Kainos Group