In his post today Seth Godin talks about Steve Jobs and his gift at finding a rift (changing the rules to everyone elses disadvantage).

What Seth seems to suggest is that people accidentially find the rift and then work it. While that maybe true for some for most people they work really hard at creating the riff. Dyson spent many years perfecting his vacum cleaner. Gates and the development team spent years perfecting Windows. As someone once said 'I spent 20 years trying to become an overnight sensation'.

All these people have a few things in common.

• Tenacity
• Drive
• Vision

And as Seth says....a willingness to bet big on success. Sometimes a whole company.

I worked for 3M in the mid 1970s. A company with a deserved innovation. Check out how many of their innovative products came from those 3 things and also earlier mistakes or product design failures.  

I remember something Ben Rosen said at our first Lotus team meeting in 1985 'I have backed a lot of products that turned out to be dogs but one or two have become superstars. That is what keeps me going and why people forgive me for my mistakes'.