Radical Innovation: How to Stay Ahead of Your Competition

For your business to succeed, you need to stay competitive. How do you do that? It starts with innovation, or better yet, radical innovation. If you’re not familiar with radical innovation, no worries. We spoke with Steve Hoffman on our new podcast, and he explains everything you need to know about how to radically innovate, how to infuse that ethos into your business, and how to pull ahead of your competition.

Watch our discussion with Steve Hoffman below for your crash course in radical innovation:

Steve Hoffman is the CEO of Founders Space, a global startup accelerator, with over 50 partners in 22 countries. Every year, he mentors hundreds of startups, helping them overcome their biggest challenges. Steve has founded three venture-funded and two bootstrapped startups, each of which is a unique tale. His book Make Elephants Fly is the #1 book on the process of radical innovation. Everyone needs to innovate to stay competitive. It doesn’t matter if you’re a startup founder, corporate executive, small business owner, freelancer, or professional, there’s a technology out there that’s going to upend your industry. The book is designed to help you implement the same innovation methodologies and processes as Silicon Valley’s top startups.

We begin our conversation with a look at how Steve went from being the CEO of Founders Space to deciding to publish a book. He shares his experiences of working with others to grow their businesses and the knowledge that informs his book, Make Elephants Fly. Ideas can be like elephants – big and seemingly immovable. How can you let your ideas out and make them fly? It can seem impossible, but in fact it can be done with the right team, resources, and perspective.

Steve examines what innovation is, defining not only what innovation means, but also where it comes from. Believe it or not, innovation often doesn’t come from those higher up on the career ladder. Rather, truly innovative ideas often come from lower-level employees and those with a unique perspective on the business, the customers, and the industry. And these ideas can come from any department within the company.

Getting Radical

What, then, is radical innovation? Or rather, what differentiates innovation as being “radical”? Steve talks about different forms of innovation, from incremental steps forward to giant leaps and bounds. To be radical, you, your team, and your organization must be open-minded, experimental, and unafraid of failure. Indeed, a lot of the best innovations come after at least one or two failures – often more. But each misstep helps you on the path to the winning idea.

Radical innovation also helps greatly in keeping your business competitive. How so? Consider the most successful companies today. Are they the ones that never change, that continue to offer the same products or simply copy what others in their industry do? Or are they the ones that boldly offer new products and services, sell them in a new way, and uniquely impact their customers? You probably know the answer to that.

In his book, Make Elephants Fly, Steve seeks to implement methodologies and processes used in Silicon Valley’s top startups. Here, he explains why he looks to Silicon Valley for inspiration and guidance. It’s not just because he’s based in that area; Silicon Valley’s startups are successful for a reason. Steve also tackles a section of his book called “Breaking Barriers,” describing the types of barriers a company might encounter and how to overcome them.

For more inspiration on how to innovate radically and make your business competitive, listen to our full podcast with Steve below:

To learn more about Steven Hoffman and Founders Space, visit his official website here. You’ll also want to read his book, Make Elephants Fly: The Process of Radical Innovation. Keep up with all of Steve’s latest updates by following him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.