Naysayers V Innovators.
An open letter to Australian Dentists
Dear Dr,
Without innovation productivity does not increase. Without productivity increasing our lifestyle does not change. When the first Australian colony was founded in 1788, the majority of the workforce was engaged in farming and construction labor. Without innovation we would not have lifestyle changing items such as refrigerators and the motorcar. Persistence always beats resistance. Sometimes it takes conflict to spur innovation, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is now used for daily navigation. Velcro was invented when a Swiss hunter walked in the woods and noticed burs clung into his trousers and tried to simulate this effect. Often the customer does not know what they want – if Henry Ford had listened to public opinion he would have created a faster horse! Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon said the number one rule for entrepreneurs is to not fear failure. Not every hit will be a home run, but mankind’s existence will improve.
Innovators will always have their detractors because they displace people and disrupt current practices. Huge showdowns took place in the UK when coal mining started becoming obsolete and the print industry became mechanised, which lead to riots and wholesale worker unrest, but fast forward and these jobs have been replaced, with other jobs from industries, which were not contemplated at the time.
Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity, has founded “the Boring Company” that would focus on traffic-alleviating underground tunnels in LA potentially transporting cars at 125 mph across the city. Steve Jobs single-handedly changed retail, music and the phone industry. Jeff Bezos has revolutionised retail and online storage. All these people have had their detractors.
I don’t for one minute pretend to be anywhere near the afore-mentioned group of people! But I feel compelled to comment on my industry changes. 1300 Smiles pays a dividend greater each year than its IPO share price, which has risen from 80 cents per share to over $6.70, Pacific Smiles Group has just rolled out it’s 66th practice, Dental Corp now BUPA made countless multi-millionaires out of dentists and my old group Maven (Dental Partners) continues to expand trans Tasman. All the afore-mentioned were ground breaking in their own right and are successful organisations, creating employment for many people but they are not for everyone. All have been subjected to ridicule and innuendo by ill informed pundits. Luckily for mankind, detractors on the whole are ignored and... read more...
