What leaders DO: innovate
by Miki Saxon 
Back around 1998, I was at a VC/entrepreneur event and in the course of a conversation I commented that I’d been working with startups for 20 years. A young idiot (as opposed to an old idiot) scornfully informed me that I couldn’t have been since startups were a result of the Internet and the web.
I guess idiocy still flourishes since I was recently informed by a thirty-something idiot that startups and innovation are the province of techdom.
But innovation is actually the provenance of minds that think outside of conventional parameters, with or without tech. They are minds that see beyond what’s being done now to what could be done, sometimes with a new product, but just as often with a new process.
Brothers John and Brendan Ready are two such minds. Their lobster fishing profession may be hundreds of years old, but that hasn’t stopped them from innovating not the catching, but the sales process.
They created Catch a Piece of Maine where you can buy all the output of a trap for $2,995 per season. That money buys you at least 40 lobsters a season, plus each shipment also includes clams, mussels, a Maine-made dessert, bibs, cooking instructions and a gift card, plus free shipping sent wherever and whenever you want.
Lobstermen who work with the Readys benefit by getting free traps and a premium of 40 cents per pound for the lobsters caught in them…So far, the Readys have sold the rights to about 30 traps. Their customers include financial institutions, CEOs of small companies and a few individuals. About a third are from Maine with the rest scattered about, as far away as California.
The Ready brothers have been lobstering since they were 16, started their seafood business three years ago (at ages 22 and 25) and now thought up this great value-add.
To my mind it’s the best of an all-around win, the Ready’s grow their business, the lobstermen earn more in a very hard profession, and the buyers have something totally unique to share among friends, clients and business associates.
What’s not to like?
