Steve Sasson changed the way we capture memories when he invented the digital camera in the 1970s. The popular technology speaker believes that every workplace should invest in its inventors and innovators, and the only way to disrupt your industry is to experiment – even if that tempts failure. In this exclusive interview for Times of Startups, Steve reflected on his experience at Kodak and offered advice for the inventors of the future.
In the workplace, why should business leaders allow for experimentation and inventing?
“If you’re leading some sort of corporate entity or something, not only should you allow it, but you should also encourage it, because what do you think your competition is doing?
“It’s the lifeblood of the future of a company, you know? And so most companies, they’ll basically say they really like experimentation, they like innovation, until it happens to them and then it becomes a challenge to them rather than an opportunity. And I think that’s the danger sometimes.
“You should definitely encourage that in your organisation, discuss it and make it part of your everyday. Not an unusual thing, it should be part of the everyday discussions. And it doesn’t have to come from a research laboratory! It’s basically people challenging the established processes in order to see something new, and you’ll see a lot of failures.
“You’ve got to basically celebrate the failures a little bit, say, ‘listen, we didn’t succeed here, but we did learn the following and that’s a success’. So I think we have to make innovation and experimentation more an everyday, ordinary thing as opposed to some exceptional event.”
Having disrupted the photography industry with your digital camera, why should businesses strive to disrupt their own markets?
“I will tell you that digital photography was something that occupied me and a number of people at Kodak for well over three decades before it happened.
“In the case of photography, it was a technological revolution that took place – silicon technology, light and digital technology came together and offered another pathway. And by the way, that pathway was well known and practised by a whole bunch of other companies that never considered photography as part of their business. You know, the Sony Corporation wasn’t considered a photographic company back in 1980, for example.
“You have to constantly think about how you can disrupt, how your business could be disrupted and how you can anticipate that. You know, the old expression, ‘only the paranoid survive’, I think is very, very apt. I don’t know if you have to be paranoid – in the case of Kodak, I think a little bit more paranoia would have been helpful, but it would have been pretty trying to exist in a paranoid state for 30 years.
“You should be the devil’s advocate, try to disrupt your business and have real honest conversations and empower the change agents within your organisation to make powerful arguments. Lots of times that change comes in and says, ‘hey, we could do it differently’, and they’ll say, ‘yeah, well, we don’t want to do it this way’. We had that.
“I had that argument for many decades with Kodak. You know, ‘why would anybody want to look at that picture or a television set? Prints, people love prints. People have been doing prints for a hundred years, what do you have that says that they don’t want prints?’
“[I would say] ‘OK, well, tell me the two or three things that would change your mind about this. If this was developed, if that was developed, if the cost of this got down to that point, then would you consider it’. Then you get down to the specific breakthroughs that might change their mind.
“You’ve got to empower people who think differently and give them a chance to have really valid arguments.”
What advice do you have for the inventors of the future?
“Start now. Don’t be afraid of failure, failure teaches you a lot. I got very comfortable being wrong, I know it’s a sad thing, but get comfortable being wrong because you’ll learn a lot. And then you do your calculations, do your experiment, and all of a sudden you see something you never expected. And that is kind of thrilling to me.
“You know, it humbles you and excites you at the same time. I don’t worry much about reputation, and I recommend you don’t do either – start young when you don’t have a reputation. And then if you’re old and you have a reputation, put it on the shelf and use it when you can.
“There’s a lot going on. Things move faster than ever before. Innovators, just be curious, be comfortable with failures, learn from them and just keep going forward.”
