But surely the true success in business comes from inventing something new, solving a problem that’s previously been seen as unsolvable, and treading where no entrepreneur has before?

Business leader vs innovator

In most industries across the world, there are thousands of businesses essentially offering the same thing. The same solution to the same problem. The same product used for the same purpose.

And yet there are very few true innovators.

When was the last time you picked up a product, viewed a website, or saw a social media post and were genuinely ‘wowed’ by the ingenuity of what you were looking at? When was the last time you learned about a service that was so unique you’d not heard of anything similar? People are rushing to set up businesses in the same market as each other, leading to overcrowding in so many sectors – but why are we doing things this way when there are many problems in the world that we haven’t yet overcome as human beings, and so many solutions left unexplored?

The difference is the comparison between business leader and true innovator. The former may have the credentials to lead a company: an industry they’re passionate about, the ability to motivate and inspire a team, an oversight of everything from sales to marketing. But the latter, the innovator, looks at things from a different perspective.

The innovator approaches problems that others have ignored for fear there’s no solution, because the innovator realises that you can solve many of these problems with a little ‘out of the box’ thinking, with testing and experimentation, with the backing of science, and with a lot of hard work.

A real-life example

In the medical world, plenty of people had written off a solution to sleep apnoea and snoring, despite the turbulent effects of both upon the patient and anyone in their vicinity during night times. In the UK alone, there are ten million people with sleep apnoea – equating to 13% of men and 6% of women aged between 30 and 75 being affected (The Sleep Apnoea Trust). Even more people experience snoring: approximately 40% of adults or 15 million individuals.

Add to that number all of their partners, and you’ve got many millions of people being affected by these night-time occurrences. Yet for so many years there was no real viable treatment. Some had tried to offer a solution, but all had their own issues and didn’t really ‘solve’ the complaint.

Now, there is a solution which is endorsed by doctors and patient alike, and is clinically proven to work.

A different approach

That’s because there was no desire to shy away from an ‘unsolvable’ problem. Instead, it was a case of looking at something which was having a real, detrimental impact upon such a large proportion of the population, and searching for a viable solution.

Yes, it’s difficult, yes, there are setbacks and complications along the way. But tenacity and fortitude ultimately pay off when suddenly the ‘unsolvable’ becomes solvable.

Some of the world’s most well-known businesses and entrepreneurs have tackled issues that they couldn’t find a viable answer to within existing companies: Airbnb was launched because the founder was struggling to pay his increasing rent and noticed hotels in his city were full due to an upcoming conference; Klarna’s founders wanted to be able to offer a secure invoice system for online shoppers; and Uber was the solution to the unreliability of being able to find a black cab on the streets of San Francisco.

People keen to start up a new business may wonder if they can capture a slice of the room renting, online payment, or taxi app pie – and there have been many competitor businesses springing up with the aim of doing exactly that.

But innovators will think: we’ve got solutions to those problems now, what else needs solving and how can I bring a truly new idea to the market?

And that is surely a mark of true business success, being able to claim to be the first thriving company within a sector (maybe even creating your own sector!). It may be that the second and third companies still receive a reward in the form of a market share, in the same way that silver and bronze medals are awarded to athletes. But it’s a question of whether your aim is to simply reach the end of the race, to be able to stand on the podium, or whether you want to be the winner, the gold medallist, the one everyone remembers because you were there first.

Solve the unsolvable and you can truly claim business success, take pride in standing in the spotlight and call yourself an innovator.