GoFaxer Blog

One of my biggest complaints about many large businesses is their refusal to change and innovate, choosing instead to cling to their old fashioned technologies, controlling the market and insisting that consumers continue to purchase their antiquated products.

Take gasoline automobiles for example. The gas engine that we use now is essentially the same basic technology created over 100 years ago. Tradition may work for baseball, but there’s no reason that we shouldn’t have cars that are fundamentally better by now, if at least in terms of their fuel system.

The consequence is a industry that dramatically contributes to the polluting of the world. It also ties us to a natural resource with many negative political and economic consequences. Other fuel options have been shut down by political forces invested in keeping the status quo.

This would be like businesses hearing about fax to email technology but deciding to stick with their fax machines. Why would you stay with an old system that isn’t as good? But this is what’s been forced upon us by the auto industry.

So throw away your fax machine with pride. Buy a hybrid. Do what you can to tell producers that we live in a new millennium and expect products to match the times.

What does it mean to innovate? Dictionary.com defines it as:

“to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.”

Is innovation ingrained in your business model? Although it’s a common buzz word, I think that innovation might actually be kind of rare. Most businesses are simply going through the motions, based one a few concepts that they hold firm to. Few, however, are willing to really change on a regular basis.

To make innovation a part of your company culture, you’re accepting a constant state of flux, not a comfortable state for most people and businesses.

For example, I have no doubt that fax machines are being sold to companies, businesses that know that there are new and better options through email fax that cost less and are more convenient. But out of a fear of change, the decision makers fail to innovate.

There’s a new book by Proctor and Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley and management consultant Ram Charan titled, The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation. When Lafley was hired to the big position he was a career company man, not the kind of guy that you would have thought would instill a culture of change. But he did.

And they needed it. In 2000 stock was plummeting in the troubled company. He reinvented the company and turned it’s performance around big time. He did it by pushing innovation as a core company philosophy. It’s sure to be a solid read for anyone interested in producing the same quality in their business.