The news of Steve Jobs’ passing reverberated around the world. He was a technology rock star to his followers, many of whom feared Apple would decline without him. A friend of mine shares that concern. She left the Apple store the other day empty-handed after trying to upgrade her three-year-old iPhone. None of the options appealed to her. “Without Steve, things are awful,” she said.
Even if you weren’t a fan of Steve Jobs, you can’t deny he was the master innovator. Steve Jobs set out to make technology available to the masses, and he did. He took existing technology concepts and created a new generation of products that changed our lives.
My friend’s lament about the loss of Apple’s co-founder got me thinking about what it means to be an innovator. Steve Jobs didn’t create new technology; he made technology better. I believe the capacity to innovate is in all of us, but I wonder if we hold ourselves back because we confuse innovation with invention. Not everyone is an inventor, but everyone can be innovative.
To make something better, we need to open our minds, ask questions, and allow ourselves to learn from others. In business, innovation is what keeps companies vibrant and responsive to customers’ needs. It can be as simple as repackaging treatments to meet a specialized client need, pricing your services in new ways, or redesigning your workspace to make it more appealing or efficient. Innovation is what keeps clients coming back year after year because they know that as their needs change, you’ll be able to meet them.
There’s nothing that means more to me than industry praise for BIOTONE’s product innovation and quality. Innovation is something we work at every day in product research and development. Our most famous innovation, Dual Purpose, came about because we looked at existing products in a new way to produce something that hadn’t been done before.
For the first time in the industry, we incorporated Mango Butter into our new True Balance Massage Gel. Mango Butter is a wonderful ingredient. It’s rich and luxurious and hydrates the skin. Plus, it has a protective effect against UV radiation. We’re constantly looking for new and natural ingredients to improve our product family and give you more options to provide to your clients.
You don’t need to read a book on how to be innovative. The ability to look at something and ask can I make it better or different or unique is in all of us. It’s just a matter of unleashing it.