The Art of Innovating at the Right Time
How To Avoid Failure When Launching a New Product
A few years ago, Rudi Dornbush, a leading economist, said, “Crises take longer to come than you can imagine, but when they do, they come faster than you can imagine.”
Something similar can be said about economic and business trends.
Looking for an article, I came across an old post on my blog in which I talked about the “novel” trend of teleworking.
It’s from 2007, 13 years before the pandemic sent its adoption through the roof.
Launching a novel product or service is a matter of timing. Too late is wrong, but too soon is also bad.
In 2002 I launched, together with my brother Ivandra, an accelerator and a coworking space in my hometown… when the word coworking did not yet exist.
Ivandra means “to migrate”; the idea was that you could migrate “digitally”; it was the vision of today’s digital nomads.
There was some enthusiasm at the beginning, but the project failed hopelessly. Too many new concepts, too soon.
That’s why I believe sometimes you have to “incubate” very new concepts before launching them on the market. Evangelize the idea, mature it, gather allies and support… and wait for the right moment.
With the same patience that a feline waits for the moment to pounce on its prey.
The “techno-anxious,” so to speak, see opportunities early and think about implementing them immediately.
Time teaches you that the most successful strategy is not always the first or the most avant-garde.
Every innovation, every new concept, has an adoption curve, a crescendo in which it becomes widespread, and its economic potential increases.
Letting that curve advance and waiting for the right moment is an art — the art of starting at the right time.
