Where I go…observing simple innovation
I adore the reminders that are automatically thrown up on social media…those wonderful recollections of bygone years, when much more youthful-looking loved ones fill the screen of my iPhone, as I check in on the world as I know it.
It’s the start of a new day and my phone updates are the new caffeine in my early morning life.
Yes, I’m forty-something and have a Facebook account but can I let you in on a secret? I’m way, way beyond caring whether it’s the done thing or not.
In my world, with my eldest child living in the UK and the young one with me in Australia, Facebook keeps me connected and being a ‘friend’ gives me an insight into the older one’s life. It keeps me in the loop – and that can only be a positive.
It also throws up the odd gem, like this morning’s reminder of my parents’ visit to South Australia over a summer – a summer that just so happened to dish up a blisteringly hot 11-day run of temperatures above 42-degrees Celsius.
Well, a reminder of my mid-70s father’s moment of inspired – or perhaps perspired – genius, to be more precise.
Inspiration and innovation was very much part of my working life at the time, as I was consulting to a listed mining company and responsible for their innovation strategy. I worked as part of a great executive team to define what innovation would look like for our organisation.
Google defines innovation as a “new idea, device or method”, in a nutshell innovation is the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated or existing market needs.
We threw around ideas and originality in equal measure, agreeing that the word itself means different things to different people and has enormous potential to get lost in translation across so many workplaces.
For some, innovation is the multi-million-dollar ICT project, to others; it’s an individual (like my father) thinking differently about the norm and ultimately improving an outcome.
Look at Mr Parkinson Senior’s stark reminder of innovation in its purest form….
His agile and adaptable approach to the unbearable prolonged heat on his feet had him find a better solution to meet a new requirement, even if his creativity unfolded on his rather tasteless garden shoes!
In the wise words of Albert Einstein ‘we cannot solve our problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them’.
For more blogs please go to: www.whereigo.net