Cosper: Hey, Chat, where are all the new ideas?

Greetings Ambitious Achievers!

One of the great privileges of being a journalist is getting to spend time with people who see things the rest of us don’t. I mean, you sit down with someone and suddenly you’re seeing stuff you never even thought of. I’ve interviewed a bunch of entrepreneurs over the years, and the most successful ones have an uncanny, funky view of the world. They see the negative space around the shapes. And they teach themselves to hack their own problems.

When you break it down, entrepreneurship begins with a certain dissatisfaction with the way things are, followed by relentless curiosity and a big fat dose of creativity.

A few years ago in Copenhagen, I met a Finnish designer named Jenni Ahtiainen. She’d been designing jewelry and accessories for years when progressive hearing loss meant she needed hearing aids. She hated how they looked. Not sleek, not pretty, not at all fashion-forward, the devices were a strange proposition for a woman whose personal style was more mohawk than French twist. So she started messing with them. Why couldn’t hearing aids be beautiful? Why couldn’t they be jewelry? That question became Deafmetal, her wildly successful line of jewelry for hearing devices.

Jenni Ahtiainen, founder of DEAFMETAL, is giving hearing aids a little swagger

That’s the difference between looking at something and observing it. And it’s something you can get better at. Pay closer attention to the things that annoy you, particularly the inconveniences you’ve stopped questioning. Watch how people improvise around bad products, crappy design, and legacy systems. Ask why something requires six steps instead of two. Be nosy. Stop assuming that that the way something’s always been done is the best way to do it.

One of my favorite quotes, commonly attributed to Picasso, is, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” That may be some of the best entrepreneurial advice I know. Learn your craft. Understand the business. Know the rules well enough to recognize the ones that are stupid. Then break known ways of thinking.

That’s increasingly what we want SUCCESS to help you do: become better at seeing what’s already in front of you, then give you the intelligence, confidence, and tools to do something about it. That’s where it gets good.

–Amy