How to invent meanigfully?
Inventions are in simple words identifying improved methods to do something or achieve something. This resonates a lot with technological inventions as thats where a lot of new happens every day. Each technological advancements helps to achieve something better more precise and improve our life at some level.
Self Discovery
Your inventions journey starts with a self discovery that you can innovate new stuff. For some inventors it happens so early that they do this at the very beginning of their life. My case was different. I started identifying my innovative capability when others started to point it out. In my view - a good mirror is always required to see an inventor and later may be a philosopher in you. This mirror could be - tough times in career or life or may be a good friend who generously points this out to you that you are different and innovative. It could be any trigger point.
Innovative culture
Initially it will look like very specific and unnatural effort from your side to keep in the inventve mode. If I have to define this mode its basically ability to see three things in everything you do
At some point in time - you become natural at it. You start to see every problem as an opportunity to feed the inventor within you . Not everything you can solve - but still you keep thinking at it. In many cases - it's like looking at a star at distance in a beautiful night, you don't know the distance or light years towards it. Mere ability to spot the star in the sky of opportunities excites you.
How it all really happens?
As it becomes a culture - next for you is to identify area where you can work. For me #IBM allowed me to do this in software engineering. I was able to continuously do this until I received "Master Inventor" certification back in 2019. Honestly I still can not really accept myself as a "Master" of this art finding these beautiful opportunities.
Some of those self questions and definitions appeared as posts as well :)
To become a natural I found that I still have to do this a lot. So the first learning that I had was to make sure that we are always relevant in the path of inventions by continuously trying to do this until you become a natural.
A method of your own
First step to successfully survive these self questioning moments is to arrive at method of your own.
Its like how do you become a seasoned developer, you know that you need an editor that fits your purpose, build understanding of the code and dev set up, understand the architecture of what you are developing and so on
Similarly I do use a method for software inventions , which is documented here
Importance of working with people
Innovation have no value if it has no positive impact on somebodies life. This is largely true for any invention. When it becomes deeper level technology you are working on , may be you have difficulty in finding this direct relationship. But it's definitely still true.
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I have seen one thing true: Once you start working with a lot of people and groups - a lot of people start working with you. The more you ask for help an ideas- the more ideas you get to invent. So helping others to invent is a way to realise your capacity as an inventor. Most satisfying moments in my "Master Inventor" Journey is when one of your co inventor says "that was a really good thought" or "you did a nice presentation in-front of the committee". The connections that you build becomes your mirror that can eradicate the self doubts and you start believing in yourself along with your co inventors and mentors and mentees.
First step towards a meaningful invention is when you understand the importance of this becoming meaningful to somebody else : to your co inventors, to you customers, to your org and company to anybody. A meaningful invention really matters to others than you. This is again my personal view which worked for me very well.
Working with more people always helps to invent. For example work with Open Source you get more thoughts in that area. Go and participate in a conference - you get more thoughts.
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Areas where you may get more success
This is a mere difficult attempt to define something which is not quite definable.
My experience is when you select some problem
For example how to use LLMs to handle some cyber security threats is in the intersection of two hot contexts LLM and Cyber Security. This matters a lot to most of the organisations in the world now.