The Impact of Innovation in the Golf Industry

Innovation is defined in Wikipedia as “The application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs.” I have always been of the opinion that if we are not continuing to move forward whether in buisness, personal life, etc then we are moving backward. Mainly because if we don’t come up with more advanced, efficient, or new ideas on how to get better then someone else will. So to stay in front and remain relevant you can’t stick by the motto “we have always done it that way”.

The personal challenge is always in managing risk. We do it everyday in the golf industry. We manage risk whether it is if you should apply that expensive nematicide that may not work, whether it’s if you should take that new job, create that new product, commit to that relationship, etc. I have always been a believer that I  learn more from making mistakes than I do from getting things right, so I have done a lot of learning over the years.

Over the last year or so there has been a huge breakthrough on the technology front for golf. We have GPS sprayers, digital job boards, data collection, we are learning more about managing people, etc. The crazy thing is, or maybe it’s just weird timing, but it has taken, a real hit to golf, for us to start figuring out better ways of doing things. It is reality right, most people don’t change until they are forced to. That’s the same for some buisnesses and products. Until there is someone else to compete with we are happy with the way things are. That’s the same reason that Amazon is doing so well and other stores are having to try and conform to stay in buisness. Imagine if these well established stores had been innovating all along and continuing to stay ahead? Other companies would have a hard time keeping up, people wouldn’t lose their jobs and they would be on the forefront vs trying to keep afloat. My point is we should always be trying to improve ourselves, our products, our operations, our buisnesses, our customer service to stay out front and make sure the employees, customers, families etc. that count on us, have reason to do so.

We should always be thinking about how to improve things and if in order to do that it takes you developing a new product, service or taking a new class then I encourage you to take the risk so you can continue moving forward instead of waiting for something to happen before you take that jump. I leave you with this inspiring video from Steve Harvey