 I want to tell you about these six mindsets, and the first one, I call “Yes, we can.” Now, B-school strategy 101 says the following: what we’re supposed to do, in a company, is stick to our knitting. We’ve got to figure out what we’re really good at — we call them core competencies — and we’ve got to build on them, invest in them, nurture them, make them more robust.
In big companies today, it’s all about the products. So while I’m in the US, my family and I have used Tide for many years to wash our clothes. And we get a chuckle, every now and then, because we can tell a new brand manager has come along, because what happens is they change the product, right? They take the blue speckles out of it and turn them green.
And they call it “new, improved.” Is this innovation, guys? I’m not so sure. Coca-Cola, what is there? There was Classic Coke, and then, there was New Coke. That didn’t work out too well. Then, there was Diet Coke, Coke Zero and Vanilla Coke and Cherry Coke, lots of Cokes. I don’t think this is what innovation is all about.
But for entrepreneurs, we don’t focus on products; we focus on problems.
