From the archives: When is a tech company dead
The present isn’t as interesting to most of us who live here, mostly because that would mean accepting the status quo. Instead, guys like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey want to rearrange the world to fit the future they want to live in.
Stating the obvious, I think, Om. To be innovative you have to search out the cracks, challenge the way things are accepted today. Which is often best done by outsiders. For example, journalists would have never invented blogging, “What, republish other people’s stories and give them links and credit?” Never.
Journalists would never have invented news aggregators, republish other people’s news story headlines? Never. Journalists are taught to get the whole story first.
Outsiders are really important to disruption in every industry because they aren’t constrained by rules, by the present, because they don’t know what *can’t* be done.
And yes, there’s nothing much to be gained in building a business for the present. But it’s the ability to see a future that isn’t here yet, rather than bending the future to a personal will, as you seem to be saying.
The successful innovators are able to see David in the marble block of mediocrity. And figure out how to free him.