Osama A. Hashmi, a Pakistani serial entrepreneur based in Seattle and community curator of startups, has launched a book with the name ‘Innovation Thinking Methods’. In the book, Osama has taken a bold approach to encourage startup founders to adopt Innovation thinking as opposed to Lean thinking.
Lean thinking is an incremental approach to building startups, Osama A. Hashmi, the book-author, believes that this approach might be helpful for startup founders who want to improve on existing set of businesses. But for disruption, innovation and something new, he believes, thinking big without any thought barriers is the key.
While talking to TechJuice, Osama A. Hashmi said,
“I have come across many startups doing incremental improvements and building products which have better user interface or better feature set than competitors.” he said, “I don’t have any thing against such startups, but lean thinking is making highly talented startups do mediocre things.”
Osama believes that in our society there are many people who have huge risk appetite and they can invent new products. But due to the following lean thinking, they are not utilizing their full potential and in order to decrease the chances of failure, they are satisfied with building an improved version of a mobile wedding photo application, or a better and beautiful invoicing software.
If we go down the memory lane, companies who have taken huge risks have built new products, new industries, new verticals and in return, they have changed the course of human life and how we see a specific industry. Spotify, a music streaming website; iPhone, the first true smartphone; and most recently, Uber, a taxi hailing service. Companies like these have totally changed how we see their respective industries.
Osama is certainly not against lean thinking but he believes that disruption can only come if we promote innovation thinking.
“I am not saying that after reading this book, you will get some innovative ideas to build the next big thing. But this book will certainly improve your thought process and how you see things.” he said, “You will get some methods to improve your perspective on how you see startups, product building, and life.”
The book is packed with methods that can spark innovation, help the reader change their thought process and think more innovatively.
Talking about Pakistan, Osama mentioned SoloInsight, Trequant and Jumpshare as companies doing some really innovative work. Just like lean thinking, innovation thinking should also be discussed at startup meetups, conferences and hackathons.
Osama, besides talking and writing about innovation, is also heading Mocha7, a startup based out of Seattle. Before setting up at US, he was running the much respected and followed Green and White blog for the startup community in Pakistan. The startup under his leadership organized events dubbed as Coffee sessions all over the country. The blog was later acquired although no details were made public.
For the readers of Green and White, he said,
“If you loved Green & White, and miss it and wanted more of my coffee-session style writing, you’ll love this book.”
The book recommended for students, startup founders, product managers and anyone with interest in innovation is available through Amazon here.
