Innovation and Apple case competition

Everything at Haas is about innovation. Not only do we speak about it, we live and experience it everyday through interacting with classmates, joining club activities, sitting in speaker series speeches and participating case competitions.

This Monday in my "Life as an Entreprenuer" speaker series class, I was deeply inspired by the speaker Judy Estrin. Before the speech I was struggling to figure out if I can ever be innovative. After the speech I became much more clear where I was lacking and what I should do in order to motivate others to be innovative.
So innovation, in essense, can be broken down into 5 core values.

• Questioning: inquisitive but not judegmental
• Risk-taking: A positive attitude towards failure
• Openess: Share with others
• Patience: but not passive
• Trust: but not blind faith

Innovation can only be nurtured not managed. It needs to be cultivated and free from measures.

To challenge myself, I entered the Apple case competition with my three other classmates. The case is about what Apple should do to with iPhone to repeat this success of ipod in a very different industry where the players are decades old, well entrenched and unaccustomed to rapid change? and How should Apple measure success with iPhone and its ecosystem? I have to say I really love the aethestic design and user-friendly aspect of iphone. Above all, it's just VERY cool to have one.

I am learning so much about this industry and having a lot of fun working with my classmates. Although sometimes it kills me when I work with people who goes off tangent without a clear structure, I know I have to learn to deal with it and be more patient in understanding other people's perspective. I understand in order to froster innovation, I need to be more patient and more willing to open my mind to accept different communication styles