Wanted: Cojones in Business, Right Here, Right Now.

Frozen with fear — that’s one way to describe the state most American businesses are in today. No different than most American consumers. Virtually everyone is afraid to move forward as the future is so uncertain. So we wait to see what’s going to happen. If the banks will start loaning. If demand will pick up. If the market will rally for a while.

In that waiting, people seek the silver bullet, which during this tough time seems to be “innovation,” as if the very term would resurrect the economy just by our focusing on “it.” One would think somehow that innovation, which has always been a hallmark of American business, was something entirely new that we have not been doing, or not doing nearly enough of. And that by simply being innovative we could end our economic woes.

In fact we’ve now so over-used, over-hyped, and over-exposed the term that it has essentially lost its meaning.

The truth is innovation is neither something new nor is it magic bullet. It will not save the economy.

Innovation is a de rigueur component of American business now as it has been for over 233 years. Innovation is what built this country and made us the richest nation on the planet. In fact, innovation twisted and corrupted, is what lead to our current economic debacle. As hard as it is, if you seriously look at the complexity of the derivatives and packaged funds the financial community created you will find true business innovation. It was not the innovation component that created its enormous financial scale nor was innovation its downfall.

Consider the new iPhone, a new drug that prevents 30% of users from contracting AIDS, the use of high-brightness LEDs that will vastly lower power requirements and improve quality for everything from TVs to home and office lighting. There is no lack of innovation to be had here.

My clients, partners, and greater network are distributed throughout the U.S. and the globe. I connect with an ever-growing number of smart and talented people every day, and all of them, all of them, are innovative. We’re all singly and in groups, formally and informally, directly and indirectly, innovating and creating continually. We have and always have had innovation galore. And we absolutely do need it.

But innovation is not what will get us out of this mess.

What we need now is something very different, something we as Americans also have always had, though we seem to have forgotten about them: cojones.

We’ve forgotten that which made us win our freedom as a nation, made us fight for equality, made us fight to get to the moon, made us the most powerful and innovative country in the world.

But today in business amongst all the fear, all the waiting, all the hunkering down, we’ve forgotten we’ve had them. And until we find them, we can talk innovation all we want.

But nothing will happen.

Perhaps you don’t care for the word cojones — so allow me to dig further back into Latin for Audaces fortuna iuvat: “Fortune favors the bold.”

Thinking and waiting produce nothing — only doing does. That doing requires businesses to stand up and be bold. By that I do not mean the kind of cojones/boldness/innovation with unchecked risk taking that got us into trouble in the first place. Instead, I mean real contribution and real value. Products and services that do something. That make something happen. Not necessarily tangible, but nonetheless valuable.

With capital, loans, and demand so tight, it will require you and your company to be bold. To make something happen.

While so many companies and consumers sit on their hands waiting for something to happen, you must find your cojones and be bold. Take some intelligent risks. Add to the juice that will jumpstart the economy. Like a car dead in the street, it’s not going to start itself.

Fortune favors the bold. When things do begin rolling, and they will if the right, smart people are bold enough to get it started. And those men and women will find fortune that those waiting on the sidelines will never catch up to.

So I respectfully submit that you decide: will you and your business sit on the sidelines, or will you leverage all that you have done, are doing, and can do to make something happen right now and make a bold move? Will you make something happen rather than waiting for something to happen?

Fortune has always favored the bold, particularly in harsh times.  As they say, who will join me to not whine, find their cojones, and boldly create our future?

Let me know what you are doing to be bold today.

Here’s to rediscovering what makes us great,

Barry C. Collin, IDSA
CEO, Moddition, Inc.