The thing about innovation, more often than not, it finds you, before you find it.
The best innovations are usually not something we go out of our way to search out and find. Rather, most often, innovation finds and reveals itself to us.
Not because we are smart, not because we are clever, or imaginative, or creative, or interesting, or even knowledgable but, because we are willing to ask the question. Why? We are willing to ask why something is the way it is. And it is that question, that why, that we just can’t seem to get past. It nags and pesters at us. It clings to us and won’t seem to leave us or our consciousness alone. Continuing to pull at us until we finally find ourselves willing to do something about it.
Innovation often begins its journey as a question…
Many people ask why everyday. And it never leads to creative problem solving or innovative design. For most of us, why’s proliferate our every waking hour. Every time we run into a problem, we ask why? Why hasn’t someone come up with an answer for this? Why hasn’t someone already solved this problem? Why? Why? Why? It is this process of asking why, that eventually transforms our question into a problem that needs to be solved.
At some point, innovation moves from being a question to a problem…
It is the relentlessness of that question, framing it as a problem to be solved, the need for a better way, that finally forces us into action. Innovation begins when move from asking why, to actually doing something about it. When we decide to take action. When we decide to provide a solution to that question and problem that just won’t leave us alone.
Innovation, is inevitably, the result of the action we unleash towards those questions and problems that won’t seem to leave us alone…
DCulberhouse 