People talk about reinventing the wheel as if it’s a bad thing. We should change this mentality. Totally. Forever. The wheel was designed over 5,000 years ago and it hasn’t been improved since then. It’s our status quo and we like it this way. No one knows why reinventing the wheel is bad, but every time we attempt to reinvent the old, we get reminded of the 5,000 year old invention. Yet, it’s reinventing the wheel that drives innovation!
Consider a simple invention – a regular phone. Decades after it’s been invented, someone decided to reinvent it and came up with some great new ideas, like the caller ID and the touchtone keypad. Then it got reinvented again and people came up with a cordless phone. Shortly thereafter, a cellular phone was born. Was reinventing the phone worth it? You be the judge…
Consider Curves. They reinvented gyms and were highly successful doing so. Southwest Airlines reinvented air travel. Apple reinvented music players. Napster reinvented CDs. Sony reinvented tapes. Challenging status quo is good. Challenging is innovating.
Then why do we say that reinventing the wheel in bad? Because we hate change. We don’t like to fix what’s not broken. We let a few crazy people do that. We make fun of them while they are working on their innovation and remind them that they are reinventing the wheel. If they are successful, we call them innovators, consider them smart, and can’t understand why no one else could have figured it out.
So, what’s the secret of innovation? Reinvent the wheel! Challenge the old! And the older it is, the better!
About Matt Shlosberg
Matt Shlosberg is the Managing Director of Hanna Concern and is one of the most sought after management consultants. He has assisted dozens of multinational corporations and governments with solving complex business problems. Matt is the author of several books and is the leading authority on strategy and organization. Matt has received his MBA from the University of Maryland at College Park (Robert H. Smith School of Business) and has completed executive education programs at Cornell, University of Notre Dame, and INSEAD.