What makes a great innovator? We’ve recently launched the BluePointe Capital Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award to honor the brilliant creators who are changing society for the better. As part of this initiative, we’re taking a closer look at the people and leaders who we feel embody the values that our award is based upon. We spoke with Ram Menon, founder and CEO of Avaamo, to get his take on making innovation meaningful to society.

BluePointe: Who do you look at as the most influential businessperson of our lifetime?

Ram:

Dhirubhai Ambani. He started a small polyester cloth shop in a 350 square foot room with a telephone, one table and three chairs in the 1960’s - the epitome of what we call a startup today. Braving innumerable constraints, he took Reliance public in 1997, the usual dream of every Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He died in 2002 and I met him twice before that - a humble, creative man.

His creation now lives on as Reliance Industries. With revenues of $90 billion it has diversified from textiles to energy, telecom, petrochemicals, retail and more. It is what Silicon Valley would call a platform company in current technology parlance.

A true innovator leverages his smarts, the environment, and flawless execution. True innovators have three traits that are really important:

Humility

This is not a trait that is valued within my tribe of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. True humility differentiates the wise from the arrogant.

Persistence

Never, ever, ever give up. Fail fast is lauded in Silicon Valley. Perseverance, not so much! It tends to appear in airbrushed homilies about the startup culture, but in practice, trust me, it’s still a scarcity.

The idea that everything can be done better.

Nike did not invent the sports sneaker, they just did it better. Google did not invent Search, they did it better. In the noise-filled corridors of Silicon Valley, the refrain is “What’s your ‘unique’ value proposition”? What really matters is can you do it better than anyone else and generate value?

BluePointe: Why do you think innovations succeed or fail?

I think of “innovation” as mostly satisfying a (1) customer’s unmet need and (2) a customer’s existing need in interesting, new ways. Innovation in the world we live in is either to save the customer money or to make them money. The reason we all use Amazon is that it saves us money. The reason we use Uber is that it is more conveniently meeting an existing need.

“Innovation” unfortunately has become a marketing buzz word used by management consultants and legacy companies to market products and trends rather than anything meaningful. Whether it is a large, billion dollar company or a guitar teacher trying to figure out how to get more lessons every day on Thumbtack, if you can satisfy unmet or existing needs in interesting, new ways – that’s innovation.

BluePointe: If you had only $1 today, how would you use it to create massive wealth using the principles of innovation?

Creating massive wealth with no goal in mind is kind of meaningless. I think the right question is “Why are you creating massive wealth?” The right answer is: in your own small way to make the world a better place.

Disclaimer

BluePointe Ventures Tech Fund I is an investor in Avaamo