In business today, I have noticed two broad types of innovation.
The first is the traditional and most notorious type of innovation. Due to its nature, this is often called “Cascading Innovation.” It is the most straightforward, simplest and quickest path to take in business.
You can easily imagine it: a group of young, creative geniuses locked up in a colorful room surrounded by bean bag chairs, white boards and opened boxes of takeout Chinese food. After days and nights on end of brainstorming and design, they come up with an incredible innovation that is then passed down to the sales department.
Once the sales department gets excited about the new widget, they pass it to the marketing department and finally it is packaged in a way to convince the customer that the new innovation is something they “desperately” need.
Although this was once effective, and is occasionally still required, it is the paradigm of business in the 20th century. Today, I believe that it is vastly outdated.
At SWAE, we practice what we like to call “Sponge Innovation.” Although Sponge Innovation is much more difficult to execute, we believe that in the pursuit of excellence it is the only route to take. Not only does it command a huge investment of time, energy and resources; it also requires constant feedback and re-evaluation.
Consequently, we have spent the last four years listening to outfitters and taking note as to why it is that something like swaesports.com didn’t already exist. We also learned why it was that 90% of outfitters don’t offer reservations online.
We complied to their wants, complaints, questions, and ideas to design and innovate a website that would meet all of their needs. Like a sponge, we have absorbed four years of feedback to innovate a website that we now firmly believe, will transform the industry.
And yet, when I look back on it, four years seems excessive to launch a venture. In all honesty, it is excessive. But now, we are finally seeing the positive reinforcement of our insistence on sponge innovation. When we meet with outfitters, we are now able to answer all of their questions and skepticism. We can answer questions in a manner that not only makes them understand what we do, but also excites them enough to sign with us on the spot!
Four years of acting like a sponge has not only been a fun-filled and a fascinating experience (meeting and listening to people who have made a conscious decision to lead careers in the pursuit of what they love; the outdoors), it has positioned us to revolutionize an industry, to bring adventure online, and to shift the market towards sustainable practices.
We have been able to partner with 100% of outfitters that we meet in person because we have created a system that offers them more than they could have dreamed possible. SWAE surpasses their expectations and has a simple no risk guarantee: Our business is dependent on getting them business and there are no exceptions to this rule. We sink or swim with our partners and in turn, we make certain they swim fast when they sign up with us =).
All this in an effort to reach our mission: conservation through adventure. When others ask me about innovation do I recommend “Sponge Innovation?” No. I insist on it.
