BAJAN SUN MAGAZINE
OCT 2014
wondered, be better? If Einstein had stopped
questioning, we would have been left with his
thoughts on relativity instead of an entire theory.
Old problems, new ways of thinking. "We can't
solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them." In the 1940s and
'50s, book publishers printed paperback books
based solely on hardback titles that had lost
momentum; Ian Ballantine created Bantam Books
Inc. to do just that. He soon realized he was limiting his
Imagination.
profit potential by sticking to the old way of thinking.
Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than
knowledge." The fellas over at Google had all the
computer skills and knowledge they needed to have
successful careers in some firm's IT department--along
with tens of thousands of other techies. What makes
He decided--much to other publishers' and bookstores'
chagrin--to produce original paperback titles for massmarket sales. Sixty years later, both models still exist.
And Ballantine likely would have jumped at the chance
to offer books electronically.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin household names is the fact
they imagined there was a better way to search the web,
Intuition.
and then they created it.
"The only real valuable thing is intuition." Einstein
Always questioning.
worked in theoretical physics; he had to trust his
intuition to move forward on anything. Entrepreneurs do
"The important thing is not to stop questioning." One of
the most important questions an entrepreneur can ask is
How can I make it better? Whether you offer a product
or a service, improving it is the only way to attract new
clients and retain existing ones. While Phil Knight was
marketing Nike to the top of the athletic-shoe sales
heap, Bill Bowerman tinkered with the shoes' designs
and made sure Nike footwear was on the cutting edge of
the same thing every day. Intuition told Richard
Branson the Sex Pistols were worth signing to a
fledgling Virgin Records. Intuition told Hugh Hefner
men would pay for a magazine filled with high-quality
articles and fiction writing that was interspersed with
photos of nude women. (Or was it the other way
around?) Trusting one's gut led to many of the 20th
century's greatest advances.
innovation. How can the new model, Bowerman
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