I recently saw The Social Network, a movie about the founding of Facebook, and there is a line that has really resonated. Toward the end of a meeting between Sean Parker, Napster co-founder, and Mark Zuckerberg, Parker says something to the effect of:

You know what’s cooler than a million dollars? A billion dollars.

His point was to think big.  Redefine what success is.

Photo By Suzan Marie

That’s one of the common traits of successful entrepreneurs – they think big. They think in terms of ‘game-changers’, revolutionary ideas. They think outside of the box.

Not everyone can come-up with the next idea for Facebook, YouTube, or iPhone or how to send a human into outer space (and get him back), but we all can force ourselves to take a step back and think about how we can innovate in our jobs. Challenge ourselves to look at our opportunities and challenges in new ways. Question assumptions. Ensure that we aren’t just doing something because that is the way it has always been done. Learn from industries and businesses that don’t seem to have a direct relationship to ours. Always strive to improve.

Very few are going to have the success of a Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, or even Henry Ford, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from those types of successes to help us generate evolutionary, if not revolutionary, ideas.