Intelligence is a factor in performing in business; however, it is creativity of what is not here today and the risk attached to it that helps great organizations grow and prosper. Clearly, all insightful firms with imagination and drive are ahead of their time.

It is commonly believed that successful organizations sprout from their “genius” of real leadership and that it was their intelligence that brought them to where they are today. Examples often cited are: Sam Walton founding Wal-Mart, Steve Jobs with Apple, Bill Gates with Microsoft, Juliette Gordon Low with Girl Scouts USA.

“One day if I become as smart, perhaps I’ll have a successful business” is a common theme among children and young adults looking at how these executives have built corporate empires.

Avant Garde of Business

Ahead of your time: This is the process in which all executives and managers need to be in: the daily operations of day-to-day and the future operations of tomorrow in order to establish a successful organization. Focusing on the future requires the business to have capital and the creativity and imagination needed in order to change what tomorrow will look like. Every injection of a new product or new idea into the marketplace in effect adjusts the course of the environment. An innovative idea like a successful automobile or hard-drive based MP3 player such as the iPod creates an environment where competitors will race to catch up and release something stronger and better.

Part of the downfall of the American automobile industry in the 1980s and post-2000 was in part that the American auto companies were focusing on what today looked of what the future would become (energy efficient vehicles, bigger is not necessarily better). While Detroit was building SUV’s and large vehicles, they looked at Toyota and Honda building small vehicles and hybrids and were asking “Why aren’t they getting with the times?”

That was part of the problem, GM, Chrysler and Ford were “getting with the times” while Toyota and Honda were “getting ahead of their time.” In 2009, bankruptcy filings and massive debt loads resulted in taxpayers and government help bail out these American manufacturers that fell from their ivory tower. Now Toyota and Honda are wondering when the American automobile companies are going to even reach the “getting with the times” point as they close factories and re-structure their organizations with North American’s taxpayer dollars.

The question is not “What innovative ideas and products can we come up with?” the question is “What do we want to see happen that is quite different from today? What is the right direction for our business a few years from now?” From 1996 on the Sony Discman was an integral part in portable music, manufacturers would continue to enhance the Discman, some manufacturers would then push ahead to “flash-based” MP3 players that would help convert CD’s to MP3’s and hold the songs on a smaller device. Out of nowhere, Apple releases the iPod in 2001 holding up to 20GB of music while other manufacturers had units that would hold a fraction of that (64 MB, 128 MB and 256 MB, 256 MB is 0.2 GB...substantially lower than Apple's Basic iPod at 5 GB).

Apple’s thought process was not “Let’s release the biggest and best MP3 player on the market”, it was “Let’s build a device that would hold an individual’s entire music collection for use on-the-go anywhere, anytime”. By the time other manufacturers such as Sony and Panasonic stopped building a line of Discman’s and small MP3 players and moved into hard drive media, it was already too late as Apple reached dominant market share.

Creativity and being able to take risk into what the future will look like is one of the primary steps to become a successful business. The organization that takes the “risk-free” alternative is only doing what was done in the past and present which is outdated and done by everyone else. Only having “intelligence” and “genius” is not enough, there needs to be a level of execution and of a belief of where the organization is headed.

If the Japanese auto companies and Apple did not have the faith and the courage to dive into these new ideas with full support from the executive team to the line-level staff, the implementation of the creative direction would have stagnated both those organizations. Innovative ideas that turn into actions is how an organization begins the build the future today.