Dateline: October 30 2027
“I have a dream.” Famous words that inspired many to dare to have big dreams and crazy ideas about the future. Dreams that would change the world, mainly for the better.
But dreams alone are not enough. For innovative ideas to succeed you also need bold action. And it’s often in the doing that dreams coalesce, ideas get refined, business models solidify, and hard choices are made. That’s where the work happens.
It’s like a concept design or patent description. If it stays on paper it’s never going to become a real thing, never mind a big thing. You’ve got to try it out, simulate, prototype, test, do something to make it happen. And if at first it fails, learn from your mistakes, change things, improve the design or model and try again. Because, as astronaut Buzz Aldrin said about the Apollo programme, nothing is impossible if you have a big enough dream.
And that’s exactly the approach they take at SpaceX. Ignore the doomsayers that say the Starship will never get to Mars and just keep launching and iterating until it works. As it should, according to the dream. The impossible becomes routine business, a model for others to envy and emulate.
That’s real innovation, turning dreams into reality, at speed and at scale. Sure, when you move fast you break things, but that’s OK when it’s expected and built into the process ― and the budget.
So that’s why we say: don’t only dream it, be it! / First published in Mindbullets October 30 2025
Innovation is not a good idea
It’s about working on a really great problem
Dateline: April 4 2023
You might have a great idea and be obsessed with it to the extent that you can’t sleep, can barely eat and all your conscious hours are spent thinking how you can improve on this idea and share it with the world.
Stop. This is not how innovation ― truly great, disruptive innovation ― works.
It’s all very well to be obsessed but be obsessed with a problem, a real problem. Like how to feed the world or solve water scarcity, or make a car with a vastly improved fuel consumption at half the price. Better yet, make rush-hour traffic disappear.
The great entrepreneurs and innovators, such as Elon Musk, don’t start with an idea and then hone it to perfection. No, they start with a desire to change the world, to really make a difference ― for about a billion people, or maybe everyone.
The world is full of problems. It’s also full of bright guys and gals with great ideas. But don’t come up with a sexy solution to a nonexistent problem and expect the world to beat a path to your door.
In this day and age of flat, global, connected society and markets, no-one is interested in your space grey or rose gold “me too” widget, even if it is endorsed by the hottest celebrity in history. It’s all so last-century marketing, like they used to teach in college.
But if you can solve real-world problems then you might have a winner. And be prepared to obsess over that until you get it right.
Take Uber as an example. It started with a real problem ― there are plenty of taxis when you don’t need one, and never enough when you do. And you never knew when it would arrive and how much it would cost, so you just didn’t bother.
It took a generic device such as the location-aware smartphone and created a new industry, and then developed it from there.
So if you’re keen on innovation don’t start with a good idea. Look for a truly great problem. Then solve it. /First published in Mindbullets March 21 2018.
- Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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