As business owners, we have to look at the same problems that our customers, industries and competitors have been looking at for years, and see them differently.

In my line of work, I’m hired to examine a client’s business and industry, that they’ve been involved in for over 20 years, and to create something that they’ve never seen before.

That’s why true innovation is so invaluable. If you can train yourself and your team how to see things differently, the possibilities of creating something industry-breaking are endless.

The first thing you can do is put yourself in the shoes of your clients. You can take this literally and do like I do and strap a flip cam to your head and go through all the motions your customers do, or you can interview and observe them in the real world.

You can also look at what’s worked in other industries. Schlitz Beer hit it big a few decades ago by being the first brewery to explain the process of making their beer. Every beer was made the same way, but by being the first to educate people they were able to grab market share.

A few years ago, a lumber company borrowed this same philosophy and described in detail their process for kiln drying their lumber. Not only did they dominate the lumber business, but they made a fortune teaching other lumber yards their process.

Another way to see things differently is to continually seek out the problems people face everyday and see if you can tie them into your business. We all want the same things, be happy, healthy, wealthy, sexy, purposeful, etc. If you’re constantly focused on the needs and wants of people around you, innovation will show itself.

Looking at extreme users on both ends of your client spectrum will also give you insight on where you can find innovation, and often times visiting the exact opposite of what your competitors are doing will open up new doors for you.

Whatever your goals are in business, training yourself to see things differently will be an advantage for innovating in 20 year old industries that all of your competitors thought couldn’t be changed anymore.

The trick is doing it everyday.

Stuck trying to figure out what to make next? Maybe you’re looking for something new to add to your company, products or services?

The recipe for discovering and making new things is simple. If you want to be inspired and effective with new “things” build a product that solves the simple problems that you have, find the people that are like you, and do your damnedest to enchant them.

With so many people in the marketplace, chances are the problems that you have are shared with a large enough population to support and finance your efforts. The trick is to be aware of your most pressing problems, identifying them, and creating a simple solution for them.

Then hit some forums, online groups, local hangouts, and wherever else people like you would be conversing. After you’ve developed a working prototype of your solution ask people to try it out and give you feedback before you spend the serious money to develop and ship it.

Rinse and repeat and you’ll have a recipe for making new and remarkable things.

An interesting thing to always remember about clients and customers is the fact that they’re irrational.

As much as we would like to think it’s smart to give them logical reasons for buying from us, we have to remember that people love to be entertained, they love to be cool, and they love the unexpected.

We’ve all justified a car purchase, a new iPod, or sleek new jacket saying it would lead to more business, it would be better on gas, or it would save us time, but let’s face it… We bought them because they were cool.

How can you appeal to what people really want?

How can you make insurance, real estate, banking, accounting, or going to the dentist, cool?

Remember to always have logical data to support your cause, but always understand that it’s the illogical things that make people buy.

As with all things in life, business is coming full circle.

With the Internet being all the rage in business an interesting thing is happening. The Internet has made business so transparent that we’re going back forty years and abiding by the small town rules.

If you’re building a business and someone goes online and gives you a bad review it’s exactly like Bill’s second cousin saying that you’re corn meal was bad.

In a small town forty years ago, you couldn’t treat anyone badly or you lost business, integrity and referrals. More recently businesses feel like there are too many fish in the sea to worry about individual customers.

Now, companies are finding that survival means abiding by the small town rules again.

So the challenge then becomes, “how do I simultaneously look ten years into the future and forty years in the past?”.

The answer is understanding and leveraging the new rules of business with the old rules of the past.

This is a beautiful time to be in business.