How to become an innovative startup - In this article, you read some startup tips. Based on a case, I will explain how you can become an innovative startup.
Years ago, my good friend and artist Jean Pierre and I decided the following: in turn, we would draw something on paper for one minute. Together we would fill a sheet of paper until an artistic co-creation arose. From an early age, I have been a realistic sketch artist and obsessed with details in every drawing.
Jean Pierre, on the other hand, started throwing paint onto a canvas at the age of sixteen, and two years later attended the renowned Rietveld art academy. The same art academy that rejected me for lack of fantasy.
When after half an hour, the detailed contours of a palm tree with a beautiful sunset came to life, it was his turn again. He suddenly started to violate my creation with big stripes. He was busy sketching something that with a great imagination could be seen as a motorcycle. He suddenly thought it was necessary to bomb the plumes of smoke from the exhaust across my detailed contours.
I furiously roared some friendly swear words that friends use among each other and asked what the hell he was doing. Jean Pierre laughed and said:
"Creation is the art of destruction".
Tip to become an innovative startup.
Startup tip | Creation is the art of destruction.
I hadn't looked at it that way. Sometimes something has to be broken down first to create something new and think out of the box. Perhaps not always as literally as Jean Pierre demonstrated to me, but certainly figuratively. As an artist, it is mandatory to keep innovating. A characteristic that matches the qualities of many successful and innovative startups.
To innovate, Jean Pierre must imaginatively destroy his own and other creations to achieve something genuinely new and innovative. Every day he does the same thing again that Uber also once did. Putting a big line and a few thick scratches through how the taxi industry works and starting again from scratch. Not because you have to, but because you can.
Startup tip | Ignore the black lines
The leadership guru Tom Peters spoke about it 15 years ago in his show "Education in a creative society". Current education does not contribute to innovation. I am not talking about the textbooks that were written 20 years ago and are still being taught as if it is the truth of today. It starts earlier.
Much earlier. As a child of 6, you can get an unsatisfactory grade at primary school if you do not color neatly within the black lines. But what if you don't like that line? What if we were to teach children that innovation, creativity, and progress are the art of ignoring the black lines? Everyone can learn to become creative this way.
Startup tip | Destroy until you are truly innovative
This is not a plea to disrupt the entire society by no longer caring anymore about all agreements, frameworks, and even lines. It is a tip that to truly innovate, you must be able to be adaptive to change and put aside what you believe is the reality. Creation is the art of destruction, and that is true because Jean Pierre and I have made dozens of creations together, and I have destroyed them all. Until one day I finally created the word TheONE on a blank sheet and created a platform with the same name.
