People make shoes, not money

...“people make shoes, not money”. Make something that is worth while and people will pay you for it. Figure out what shoes you’re good at making and then make them well. You will make money as a result.

Knowing in advance how you’re going to make money from snake oil may sound like you have a business model; what you have is snake oil. And that’s the problem you need to concentrate on first, the fact that you’re not creating anything of value...

What I am trying to do is to point out that sometimes we hold up innovation by concentrating on the wrong thing at the start. And sometimes it’s because of the anchors and frames of the way we do things.

That's from JP Rangaswami's "Thinking about innovation and business models" post. It's a parable about the economics of innovation, told through the story of JP's personal stake in the long anticipated invention of the polypill. You can read the rest of it here.

Our industry has become so concerned with making money that we've completely forgotten about the shoes. Let's get back to making great shoes, the money will follow.