Jim McKelvey

Innovation is removing steps — the company absorbs the complexity

Avlok's definition of innovation: take away steps for the customer and you've made something magical. When Square launched the dongle, it removed the credit checks and paper forms a merchant faced — those steps didn't vanish, they moved to Square, which used software to handle them (per Jim McKelvey's 'The Innovation Stack').

“And by the way, that is innovation, right? Innovation is let's take away some of the steps and boom, you've got something magical. You know, just using an example from Square, when Square launched payments with a little dongle, the real innovation there was that they removed all of the steps that a merchant would have to go through to start accepting payments.”

Steal thisTo innovate, list every step your customer endures and delete the most painful ones — then build software so your company eats that complexity instead.