Innovation is one of those words that gets thrown around so often that we’ve almost convinced ourselves it’s something reserved for billion-dollar companies, research labs, or the occasional genius who disappears into a room and emerges with the next breakthrough product. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, I think that belief is one of the biggest reasons so many businesses struggle to move forward.
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Over the years, I’ve built more than 30 businesses. Some have grown into companies generating billions in revenue, while others failed spectacularly. The failures taught me just as much as the successes. Across all of those experiences, one lesson has remained remarkably consistent. Innovation is rarely one giant leap. More often, it’s the compounding effect of hundreds of small improvements that quietly transform a business over time.
Most leaders assume innovation has to be dramatic. They wait for the perfect idea, the revolutionary product, or the breakthrough technology. The reality is that those moments often take years, sometimes decades, to emerge. In the meantime, businesses have countless opportunities to improve how they operate every day. That’s where the real advantage lies.
I was speaking with the owner of a services business recently and asked a simple question. “What’s the biggest frustration in your business?” He didn’t talk about marketing, sales or finding staff. He talked about getting paid. His team completed the work, wages had to be paid every fortnight, yet customers often took months to settle invoices.
My suggestion wasn’t particularly revolutionary. I simply asked why they weren’t billing upfront. They didn’t think customers would accept it, but they decided to test it anyway. Within weeks, around 40 percent of customers were happily paying in advance, many using their business credit cards because they preferred earning reward points. Cash flow improved almost overnight.
That isn’t the kind of story people normally label as innovation. I would argue that’s exactly what innovation looks like. A simple change that solves a painful problem and fundamentally improves how the business works.
One of the habits I’ve developed over the years is paying close attention to pain. Whenever something frustrates me, a customer, or someone on my team, I treat it as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience. Every frustration is asking a question. Could this be done differently? Could it be done faster? Could it disappear entirely?
Those small moments become incredibly valuable when you start collecting them. Rather than waiting for inspiration to arrive, you begin building a catalogue of opportunities that can steadily improve your business.
AI has made this even more exciting because it has removed many of the old excuses. Not long ago, testing a new idea might have required developers, consultants or significant investment. Today, leaders can prototype, analyse customer feedback and automate repetitive work faster and cheaper than ever before. That doesn’t mean AI is the innovation. It’s simply become one of the most useful tools we have for accelerating it.
One mistake I see repeatedly is businesses asking, “How much will AI cost us?” I think that’s the wrong question entirely. The better question is, “What are we paying for today that we no longer need?”
I had exactly that experience when one of the software platforms my business relied on significantly increased its pricing. Rather than accepting the increase, I rebuilt the functionality we actually needed using AI over a weekend. By Monday morning, we’d migrated across and removed an expensive annual subscription altogether. The innovation wasn’t buying another tool. It was questioning whether the existing approach still made sense.
That’s something I encourage every business to do. Challenge every assumption. Question every process. Ask why something exists before asking how to automate it. Too often we become incredibly efficient at doing things that probably shouldn’t exist anymore.
Some of my favourite examples of innovation come from organisations that completely challenged accepted thinking. SpaceX questioned the economics of launching rockets. Xero challenged centuries of accounting traditions by focusing on what business owners actually cared about instead of preserving old accounting conventions. They didn’t simply improve an existing process. They asked whether the process should exist in its current form at all.
The same principle applies regardless of the size of your business.
One of my favourite stories comes from competitive sailing. For thousands of years sailors had used their arms to operate winches. It was simply accepted as the way sailing worked. When preparing for the America’s Cup, the team invited elite cyclists into the program to improve fitness. After observing the sailors, one cyclist asked a question that nobody inside the sport had ever seriously considered.
Why are you using your arms?
Cyclists understood something sailors had overlooked. Legs generate significantly more power than arms. That one outside perspective completely changed the design of the boats, leading to the introduction of cycling stations that dramatically increased performance.
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs don’t come from experts. They come from people willing to ask the obvious question everyone else stopped asking years ago.
The same thing happened at UPS. After spending enormous amounts of money trying to improve delivery efficiency, one of the drivers suggested a remarkably simple idea. Turn right whenever possible instead of left. That small change reduced accidents, saved millions of litres of fuel, eliminated millions of unnecessary kilometres and allowed more packages to be delivered using fewer vehicles.
The lesson wasn’t really about turning right. It was about listening to the people closest to the work. Innovation is often already sitting inside your business. You simply haven’t created enough opportunities to hear it.
That’s why I encourage leaders to spend more time working on their business rather than constantly working in it. Elite sporting teams devote the overwhelming majority of their time to improving performance before game day ever arrives. Business often works the other way around. We spend almost every waking hour reacting to today’s demands and very little time improving tomorrow’s capability.
Innovation needs space. It needs routines. It needs curiosity. Most importantly, it needs leadership. It’s not someone else’s responsibility or a department hidden away from the rest of the business. It’s a mindset that should influence every conversation, every process and every customer interaction.
One habit I rely on constantly is tracking what I call moments of doubt, desire and dissatisfaction. Whenever I notice customers struggling with something, asking for something or wishing something worked differently, I capture it. AI now helps me organise those observations, identify patterns and surface opportunities I would almost certainly have missed.
Those moments are where innovation begins. Not in a brainstorming session, but in paying closer attention to what people are already telling you.
The businesses that thrive over the next decade won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest research budgets or the most sophisticated technology. They’ll be the ones that build a habit of improving a little every day. Small changes compound. Small experiments create momentum. Small innovations eventually become significant competitive advantages.
That’s really what I hope people take away. You don’t need to leave with a hundred new ideas. One meaningful change implemented well is enough to alter the trajectory of your business. If you become relentless about spotting friction, questioning assumptions and giving your team permission to rethink the way things have always been done, you’ll discover that innovation isn’t a rare event at all. It’s simply the way better businesses are built.
If this struck a chord, I’d encourage you to step back from the day-to-day for a while and ask yourself one simple question: what’s one routine, one process or one frustration that no longer deserves to exist? Start there. The results might surprise you.