Writing / Essay
Innovation is not scarce, it's abundant
You don't need to be a genius, you just need to think differently.
We think innovation is for the few and the rest of us just need to get in line.
That creativity requires certain pre-requisites, without which you’re doomed to fail.
However, reality tells us a different story.
Samuel Langley, the American inventor, astronomer and physicist. Head of the Smithsonian Institution, and backed with $70,000 in government funds and the supposed brains, Langley was convinced he’d be building the world’s first commercial airplane named ‘The Langley Aerodrome’. Unwilling to share his ideas with anyone, he insisted on secrecy.
After repeated failed attempts early in the year, at 4pm, December 1903, the plane took off. Stalling, jittering, disintegrating and crashing 10 yards later, as thousands watched on. Langley felt crashed and burned.
Like Langley’s optimism, the flight was short lived and his reputation crumbled into dust. R&D into powered flight was no longer a government priority.
If the ‘smartest’ minds could not solve this problem, who could?
Enter Orville and Wilbur Wright. Two brothers from Ohio. Experienced bicycle makers and astute craftsmen, had systematically, through trial and error, solved the challenges of powered flight.
On December 17, 1903, lacking a penchant for glory and not sought after spectacular success, the Wright brothers delivered the world’s first ever successful flight (…with only five people watching).
Two years later they recorded TWENTY-FOUR miles of continuous flying. Not flattering by todays standards, but for the earlier 20th century, a monumental achievement.
Non-graduates, they found the mathematics fiendishly difficult. Lacking funds but, dedicated with curiosity, common sense, hard work and a willingness to exchange and experiment their ideas with their network, made the impossible, ridiculously possible.
They were obsessive watchers of soaring birds. They abstracted their understanding and observation of nature to design the wings attached to the propeller.
Maybe the lesson is that you don’t need to be a genius, you just need to think differently. And that innovations happens when people are open-minded, collaborative, experimental and speculative. It happens when people are curious, and perhaps even desperate.
Creativity is the core of who we are.
So as Steve Jobs would say, “think different.”