“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t Settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on”—Steve Jobs

Luckily, I was welcomed into this fast changing world in the late seventies. This was shortly before some smart teens chose to change the way things are done in our homes, offices and businesses. Imagine if you were reading this piece in the late seventies, you would be holding in your hands at least a printed newsletter, newspaper or magazine. But I bet you are reading from your desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone now. These gadgets and many more were created by those who probably were inexperienced, but deemed it necessary to excite themselves and totally alter our lives forever!

These whiz teens—aged men now—simply wanted to make significant impact in the technology industry. Perhaps, some wanted to prove to the world that college dropouts are smarter—and can be richer—than Wall Street demigods. The young dudes—likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates—disrupted the technology industry and it keeps getting exciting. The lesson you should take from these guys who altered history and built businesses out of their passion is that the surest way to keep your business alive in this information-intensive age is through innovation.

Just what is business innovation? It is finding a better way of doing something; a better way of doing it differently. It is finding a better solution that should meet and surpass the need of your existing market. Like the way Mark Zuckerberg, through Facebook, changed the way we socialized, and Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger and Zhang Yiming brought entertainment into socializing through Instagram and TikTok. Or like the Google Glass that leaped out from our science fictions, a wearable computing device that can help you capture photos, videos, make phone calls, check out maps, read emails (text messages too) and perform other amazing tasks with just your voice command.

When it is about business innovation, you must find unusual ways to always dazzle your customers or you will lose them to some new youngsters who are becoming extremely innovative just for the fun of it and to make the billionaires list. As an entrepreneur, be extremely innovative. Don't be like the dinosaurs. Always, look at your business with the eyes of a god and ask yourself “what is that one thing I need to do to hypnotize my customers all over again?” Yes you need to hypnotize them like Apple is doing to the entire world with its too-good-to-ignore-i-products.

In this post COVID19, to be innovative isn’t important, it is necessary. Already, the disaster is tanking the global economy (that of your country inclusive). Some businesses will never survive it. However, those who are going to scale through this trying period must be innovative. Some businesses are doing that already. Like Harvard Business School that is introducing free online courses to attract people to its paid online professional programs. And some businesses are already dropping their original products for the essentials. Like Virgin Orbit who recently launched its ventilators. So, what do you need to do?    

Step 1: Look at your product or the service you are rendering and ask yourself one simple question: how can I make it better or what is relevant in this post COIVD19? Once you trouble your quiet mind with any of these questions, in no time, your creative juice will release the innovative answers that you need to transform your business. You can throw the same questions to your team. 

Step 2: Once the answers come to you, you need to enter into your war room—brainstorming room. With the stay home and social distancing, I bet your brainstorming room with your team is now on Zoom. So brainstorm with your team so you can develop your answers into an amazing concept (product or service) that you can sell to your curious customers.

Step 3: Get to work immediately. Do the necessary things that you need to do to effect the change. Remember, you are only trying to be innovative and to find a way to do things differently. So, don’t just spend time redirecting the course of your business; you will need to also look into the operational model and marketing strategy.

Step 4: Don’t stop innovating. We are entering or rather we have entered a new era. It means nobody has been here before. So, we do not know what will sell or not, but you have to keep innovating until you find your path into the hearts of your customers. And in no time, your business will stabilize and tower above your competitions.