Spirit of Innovation

To those of you who have been wondering why this blog has been so quite the past few days, I am sorry to have left you wanting, but I have been attending to the details following the death of my mother.  In times like this, there is always the impulse to reflect.  I have been doing my own reflection on many things.  One such topic of reflection has been the nature of the innovative spirit and the impact my parents had on my own growth as an innovation practitioner.

There are generally two camps on the topic of how innovators come to be.  There is the innovators-are-made camp which believes that innovation is a learned skill and can be taught and codified.  The other camp is the innovators-are-born camp which believes that a special creative spark of genius distinguishes the innovation elite.  In one sense it is an irresolvable question, as the members of the second camp always have the convenient refuge of claiming that anyone who can be taught the art is able to learn it only because they were already blessed with the innovators spark.  Still, we ponder the question.

In my own case, I can see that there have been two distinct forces that helped form my own innovation impulse.  My father was an inventor and innovator in his own right.  He taught me many of the basic skills of innovation at an early age.  Some of my earliest memories of my father are of him teaching me calculus and electronic design in the backyard when I was six.  He strongly believed in passing along what he knew, so he taught me think critically, to design and build things, and to be unafraid of taking creative risks.

However, these basic skills were not enough to mold the innovation practitioner I have become.  It also required the element of passion.  For this, I have to thank my mother.  She inspired me to believe that anything I could imagine was possible, she cultivated in me an insatiable hunger for knowledge, and she encouraged me to relentlessly seek the truth that is at the core of every great innovation.  Passion combined with skill is the formula for success in most arenas of practice.  Innovation practice is not different.

So, as look to my own innovator’s spirit, I can see the clear evidence of some not so invisible hands molding my thinking and stoking the fires of passion that have guided my professional life.  I was made an innovator.

I have many times in the posts on this blog asserted that innovation skill and competence are transferable and that organizations can benefit greatly by establishing high-performance innovation environments that cultivate and develop these capabilities to the highest level.  After reflecting on the subject these past few days, I am convinced more than ever that this is true.

In these very competitive times when the evolution of market and technology landscapes accelerates on a daily basis, no company can afford to ignore this truth and leave their future to the random outcomes which are the domain of accidental innovation practice.  Success in tomorrow’s world that is here today requires a focus and diligence of innovation execution that is second to none.

Will your company be a leader or a laggard?  Will your company define the future or fall victim to its ruthless advance?  What to you think?

This post is filed in loving memory of my parents and innovation mentors:
John Arthur Todhunter 1904 - 1973
Maria Teresa Torres de Todhunter 1919 - 2007

Comments

[Paul Williams]

James:

Very sorry to hear of your loss. It sounds like your mother was a special person who believed in the power of imagination. You and your family are in our thoughts and prayers.