The Driving Force Of Innovation In Today's Business Reality

With lots of eyes on the environment and the business environment, angel investor Brian Shawn Cohen says the key to innovating in today's business climate hinges on creating the right ecosystem to support new ideas, accelerate innovation and rebuild businesses.

"Innovation is now a team sport," Cohen said during the recent World Innovation Forum, explaining that innovators need their own support system of collaborators, followers and evangelists to take their ideas across boundaries and into new consumer demographics.

"On its own, innovation stands alone. It needs an early adopter. Without those early adopters, these innovators wouldn't be anywhere. Innovation on its own doesn't do anything. It needs an environment of partners to work with," Cohen explained. "There needs to be an ecosystem in which innovation can thrive. It doesn't happen on its own. It's the environment that helps innovation."

Part of that ecosystem is the kind of business plan competition that has taken flight at hundreds of colleges and universities, awarding millions of dollars in investor capital behind great ideas that need resources to become transforming ideas.

"Our culture is telling kids, 'Go out and build something yourself,'" Cohen said. "People in New York are telling me it's the best time to be innovative and to be an entrepreneur."

The challenge today, however, is that, "Ideas we come up with today are more perishable than ever before."

Given his angel investor profile, Cohen said there are clear examples of why most startup companies fail. These include confusing a clear vision with a short distance, the ego and greed that reveals some member of the team has to be the smartest person in the room, the failure to create clear buy-side understanding of a product or service, or not being smart enough or fast enough given the competition.

"It's not enough to be smart. It's not enough to be fast. You have to be smart fast," Cohen said.

Reprinted from Execunet Recruiter Newsletter 07/29/10

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