What does it take to make a dream come true? Guy Howard-Willis was an avid cyclist in New Zealand. He couldn’t shake a crazy idea that followed him for years. He committed to figuring out the path forward because he didn’t want to be that guy with a great idea that never saw the light of day. The idea is a bike that you can ride on the water. He calls it the Manta-5 XE.
While this idea of a bike on water floated in his head, Guy eventually found Roland Alonzo, a bike engineer who ironically couldn’t swim. He was the perfect partner to help solve the technical challenges over several years. Like Guy, Roland was committed to bringing this vision to life, and over several years, they developed the world’s first hydrofoil bike.
Pedaling an Adjacency
Often innovation is not revolutionary but evolutionary. Taking the concept of a bike – pedaling to move forward and putting it into a new context and environment like the ocean. What’s most interesting is taking a common idea and bringing it somewhere new, different, and unexpected.
Big ideas are often small offshoots of another idea – with a focus on something new and different.
Uber and Lyft are taxis on-demand leveraging GPS and payment apps. Essentially, like the bike on water, their service reimagines something we are familiar with – on-demand transportation.
Airbnb is also a reimagination of hotel rooms, except the rooms are within people’s homes. That spare bedroom becomes a revenue stream for the homeowner, aided by the technology platform.
Shef, a new service I wrote about last week, allows immigrants to use their native cooking skills and either cook at home or in a rented commercial kitchen and sell their food through a delivery service. It’s a reimagination of a restaurant without the seating, overhead, and significant capital expense.
A Guy on a Bike
Listen to Guy’s Ted Talk here to get a sense of how someone goes from inspiration to product to business. He is plainspoken, and his story provides an insider’s view of going from inspiration to product launch.
Some of the best and most innovative ideas begin, like Guy’s with someone wondering.
What are you dreaming about inventing?
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
Walt Disney
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Image courtesy of Manta 5
