GETTING PAID will be the only game in town in 2011. And getting paid will be the biggest single factor affecting the level of innovation in Ireland over the next three to five years.
We spend too long talking, writing, pontificating about the other stuff. We forget that business is about getting cash in the door. It’s not enough to come up with winning ideas. Nor is it enough to crack the process of turning an idea into a saleable product. It’s not about finding a market for the new thing. It’s not the pitch. It’s not getting to a ‘yes’. It’s not even about shipping the final product or service to the end user. All of the above are where we spend our energy, and they dominate the conversation, consuming acres of newsprint and blog space, shaping conference agendas. This is the sexy stuff, the bit that makes us sound clever, like we’re close to the zeitgeist.
But out there in the real world, it’s all for nothing unless you get the cash through the door. And cashflow problems will kill off more great ideas, products, innovations and businesses than anything else.
This is true both on a practical and psychological level. Nothing kills creativity like money worries. They invade that space in your head where ideas germinate. Seth Godin recently listed where ideas come from. Ideas he said, “occur when dissimilar universes collide. Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice. Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we’re asleep and too numb to be afraid. Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we’re not trying. They come in spurts, until you get frightened (Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week)”.
Alas, the reverse is also true. To create something entirely new, we need to be able to move beyond the day-to-day chatter – Jonathan Franzen, arguably the greatest living American novelist, said recently “nobody with an internet connection is writing good fiction” – and I’ve come to believe that, rather than being about raw talent, success in any creative endeavour depends on the skill of blocking out noise.
Too often, the word innovation is used to sell us stuff, a way to tap into our need for newness, which is rapidly defining us as a generation. We crave the next thing like drug addicts: I hear BlackBerry has a tablet coming out that GQ says is going to be better than the iPad, and so on and so forth.
But the reality of business today is not ipads, iphones or biotech, it’s sitting on the phone trying to persuade, threaten or sue the bloke you sold to six months ago and who is finding ever more creative ways of ignoring your calls. “When I get paid, you’ll get paid” is the mantra running up and down supply chains in every sector, in every county. When that stops working you’ll hear: “If you sue me, I’ll go out of business and you’ll never see your money”. This is a fight for survival, and only the most creative will survive. But that creativity is going to be applied in area of the dark arts, more Voldemort than Harry Potter.
I work with a design agency, a very good one, which had an issue over the non-payment of a client recently. They were exposed to several thousand euro and the clock was ticking. The usual through-the-front-door stuff was tried and failed. Very quickly, in this situation, you realise there are two types of business. There are those which haven’t got the money and will go under, probably with your invoice attached. The second – and probably more common – group is made up of businesses that have money, but which are choosing to pay their other suppliers rather than you.
Once you’re locked in to this death struggle, there is a bit of knowledge that, once accepted, changes everything: they won’t pay you unless they have to. Knowing this alters the game and forces you to get creative. To this end, in the manufacturing and digital industries, there will be the development of something we might call ‘remote obsolescence’. The aforementioned design agency got paid because ironically their product failed in situ, at the end user. Their client was on the phone pleading for their help in fixing the glitch because their own customer further up the supply chain was coming on strong. This got the designers thinking. What if every product we make could be controlled by us? If we don’t get paid, we turn it off until we do. That’s a heck of a hammer to have in your pocket.
They’re now working toward remote keys, that can access remotely. And they see applications beyond the manufacturing sector. If what you create is delivered digitally for example, wouldn’t you want the ability to ‘turn it off’ until you get your cheque?
