The Culture of Innovation

When I was a kid I saw a future filled with flying cars, fantastic medical devices and endless energy.  I saw no reason why these things wouldn’t become a reality.  Today, like most other days (sometimes I walk or ride a bike) I drove to work, in my truck, a truck with tires, gas engine, and brakes.  Although my truck is a 2000 Nissan, the tires, gas engine and the breaks are not radically different than they were when I was born, or for that matter when my parents were born.  Sure tires have progressed… a little, the gas engine is… more efficient, and breaks are made of a more exotic compound, but essentially there has been little change in our basic American transpiration, the car.

What happened to the Ferdinand Porsches, the Henry Fords, and the Sōichirō Hondas?  During their careers they sought to solve significant engineering opportunities with innovative answers.  They weren’t satisfied with incremental change, they pushed for significant differences.  What they did was risk.  Now their patronage is more concerned with protecting their brand than taking the necessary risks to truly move forward.    

In order for us to embrace the changes necessary to curb the destruction and misuse of God’s creation we must bless and encourage others to risk, and to fail.  We should encourage them in their failures, ask what they learned and support them as they try new things. 

More impotently we should re-address what questions we are asking.  The issues facing us are far different than they were 10 years ago.  That means we shouldn’t be asking the same questions we were 10 years ago.  Our questions shape our answers.  Are the only questions we ask profit related?  

As forward thinking as businesses appear to be, they are guided by the question “what will people buy?”  If you haven’t noticed people are slow to change and slow to adapt.  My hope and prayer is that innovation will no longer be bound by current business models, models that are focused on protecting the status quo by marketing slight modifications to last year’s model.  Let’s let innovation blossom out of our imaginations, our creativity and the best our current technology has to offer.

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