While Steve Jobs might be talked about so much that it is easy to tune out to the lessons from his life in innovation, the truth is, there is tons of value in observing his approach to design. He was motivated by the art of design itself. He felt that creating wonderful product design was all the impact that he needed to have to be an ethical innovator. He was not trying to bring redemptive impact in the sense that Luke Gilligan is, but he felt that he was doing enough if he nailed designing consumer products.He was driven by beauty, and he cared about the functionality for users, but because of it fit into the bigger field of design. He was not over concerned with personal profit, and threw his power around to get to design the products he was passionate about. While he was not focused on redemption, all innovators can improve their impact by standing out with design, and for that, Jobs should be admired. He started having input on apple design as a young man who was obsessed with caligraphy. That romance with design led him to creating the sleekest personal electronics that exist for consumers today, and because the software was also so design focused, changed the world.

I thought it would be interesting to write about young entrepreneurs from the first-person view, of someone who has started three ventures by the age of 21. I want to focus on the practice of how I innovate in this post. In high school, I started a health and wellness social network, Spero. Spero was an app that in addition to social networking, had live in-app video training with certified professionals. I started the venture as a result of losing 40 pounds in high school and wanting to bring people the same tools I had to achieve and sustain their wellness goals. I was someone who had lived the journey of weight loss and so I had a good insight on what brings transformation, and that is how I innovated all of the app’s features. The power of community is so big for people looking to lose weight, which is why I made it part of the app. The in-app training innovation stemmed from the power in a knowledge-based approach to people’s fitness goals. While my own journey helped me innovate, I did exterior research to ensure that my innovation was on pace with what the masses needed and that I was not missing their needs by only going off of my own health journey. I think overall when you have been a customer of your own product, that is a very key way to innovate. However, it can not be the only thing, as you need to be open to learning and creating for the needs of others.

While many posts on this site are about A-list innovators, someone with great innovation capacity and execution is a student here at Grove City College. Luke Gilligan started Resense, a subscription care package service for those suffering from Dementia. As someone who knows Luke personally, I have gotten to see what drives him on his follow-through. Luke is very impact-focused and inspired by the redemptive framework from Praxis. He is working on starting a non-profit arm, because he sees the capacity for greater impact down that avenue, even though it comes with less financial gain for his sake. This does not deter him because revenue is not what drives him to overcome all the start-up stress, redemptive impact through sacrifice is. Luke goes after impact by being very curious about those who suffer from this illness are learning what products help them more than others. As a result of learning, Luke updates his product offerings a healthy amount to keep up with where patients are. Luke is open to being wrong and glad when someones catches an error he is making because if the correction can improve his touch on patients and families, his way being wrong does not burden him. Luke is a great model of a young, impact-focused innovator right here among us at school.

While innovation is a great practice, there is a method to it that is important to consider. Many think of innovation as having a blank canvas and coming up with whatever abstract cool idea one may formulate. However, if the goal of said innovation is to create true impact for people, there has to more analytics involved in what is traditionally held as a right-brain practice. There is a lot of importance in getting to know the needs of the people that your innovation would impact because that should be the driving force in the design process. One very popular way to do this is to conduct interviews with potential users of your invention to get a feeling of where specifically they could benefit from a fresh way of doing something. Having this space outlined from real people is where zone in which the innovation should occur. Innovation outside of this zone will not breed relevance or impact through innovation, thus making the innovation somewhat of a waste. However, when you allow your innovation to be set within relevant parameters, impact is very possible, as your are operating within the space people need you to be breaking conventions and norms in. Anything short of this is aimless ideation, which may easily miss the needs of some.

While Elon Musk has become mostly known for his creation of Tesla, his unique lifestyle, wild tweets, and now, buying Twitter, he position on the global stage comes from his impressive entrepreneurial practice. Elon Musk, throughout his career of serial innovation and venture starting, has been relentlessly focused on mission over profit. From a purely financial basis, many would write him off as foolish for how he has allocated his personal wealth towards his passion projects. However, his passion projects include Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, and so many more global brands. So how was he able to accomplish such big feats while ignoring traditional entrepreneurial wisdom? Curiosity. He was so curious about the best-case outcomes for his inventions, that he poured nearly all of his personal net worth into SpaceX and Tesla, instead of allocating it all to one venture, which with traditional wisdom, would have given him the best chance at any level of success with either venture. However, he was so driven with what was possible and did not lock himself in with what was feasible. Now, he is the richest man in the world, with both companies thriving both financially and also on an impact basis. While business owners should use logic in there choices, sometimes they need to dare more than they are used to.

The field of entrepreneurship allows its members to have a refreshing outlook on pain. Discomfort and struggle plant the seed of innovation. This is so because those feelings are the desire for a better way. While everyone has pain in so many life experiences, what makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur is taking it upon themselves to create a better way. While negative experiences are never fun on the surface, for those who are drawn to innovation and making impact, they can so often present a unique opportunity to use a skillset that makes a process more complete. As a Christian, this is a very cool way to reflect the coming perfection when God makes all things new, and points to the combination of brokenness and the need for better in our world. Innovations are adapted if they can decrease any form of pain, which brings in the phrase “no pain, no sale” because if your innovation does not solve a pain, it is unlikely to be adapted. As someone who is on the innovation side of things, I find that an obsession with the pain is what leads to the best results in business because it increases the need people will see with your creation.