We all want our companies or products to be game changing. We want to innovate, push, and dazzle our customers until we become industry leaders.
And every once in a while, we can change the game. We can come up with something so brilliant that everyone has to catch up. This is what the iPhone did, of course. All of a sudden, now, nearly every phone has a touch screen.
But another way to shake things up is to change the gauge. Read this recap of how all railroads needed to be standardized after the Civil War. It's fascinating, how over just a few days, a new standard was in place nationwide.
This is how you really shake things up. You implement a new standard of appreciation or measurement. This is what the white earbud headphones did for the iPod. Other devices soon were launched that could hold a lot of music, but being seen with a white set of headphones meant you had a certain cache of cool.
Could you change the way things are measured in your industry or workplace? You don't just have to innovate or change related to what you produce, but also how it's measured.