Innovation for the common man

“In a free society, the enterprise cannot own, but only rent its human capital.”

The simple wheel! A key invention which fathered many more innovations and inventions through the ages. Who invented it and why?

No one knows how, when and who invented the wheel. It will always remain a mystery. Maybe it was invented around 8,000 B.C. in Asia,even though , the oldest wheel known, however, was discovered in Mesopotamia and probably dates back to 3,500 B.C. While the west knew not much about the wheel, it was during the industrial revolution that different ideas and innovations were thought which were based on the wheel. Today, the wheel has become the central component of technology, and used in thousands of ways in countless different mechanisms.

If I ask the question “ how many wheels does a car have “ many people will come with what they consider an obvious answer. So for a 4 wheel drive car, they will say “four”. Wrong. A car is designed and made with many more number of wheels than 4 or 8. The engine uses countless wheels and discs, the brakes use discs, the crank uses a disc etc.

Thus the wheel has become an invaluable component of our day to day life, while we still don’t know how or who invented it.

My own theory is that eons ago, a weary walker, tired from his journey, dreamed of a tool which could take him or his load from point A to B. That’s a theory, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the wheel, like countless successful innovations after it, was born out of a necessity or a need.

Innovation is therefore born out of a need, felt, stated or observed and its popularity or success is driven by the perceived demand for fulfillment of that need.

So, what fuels innovations and inventions ?

A.    A Need

B.     A idea for fulfillment of that need

C.     A demand for the fulfillment of that need.

Having said that let me go a step further. Who creates the idea for the fulfillment of a need? We humans, ordinary people, special people, great people, not so great people, in short EVERY ONE of us.

In a paper in 1997, WIPO stated “Inventiveness and creativity are features which have favored the differentiation of mankind in the course of evolution, from all other living species.” 

Following from the above, our belief is that when ordinary people become aware of the needs of the society in general or a group within that society, by applying their conscious mind, can conceive a solution to fulfill those needs, either by creating an invention or by an creating an innovative use of available technology.

The problem we are faced with in this world today is NOT the availability of people who can think and create, but of people who don’t want to or have lost the will and the intent to create. This loss of will or intent is mostly driven by the inability of the common man to appreciate his / her societal ecosystem as well as technology that may surround them.

Consider the computer. “The United States is the birthplace of both the personal computer and the Internet. It has written the rules for using business technology to deliver staggering increases in worker productivity. It has given the world major innovations in the microprocessors that power computing and electronics devices of all sizes and functions.

The U.S. has quite simply served as the undisputed leader and catalyst of the global IT industry for the past 40 years. Yet the landscape has changed rapidly over the past decade, and especially in the past five years, as the U.S. is now facing challenges across the board from nimble innovators in Europe and Asia”

“The United States has fallen to seventh place among 122 economies in its network readiness, or ability to leverage the opportunities of IT”, according to a report … by the World Economic Forum

Consider another report from American.com ( authorVivekWadhwa) , “America makes and designs less and less, and has become a soft-bellied country of marketers, PR people, and lawyers—make-nothings, in other words”.

Even President Barack Obama has called  for more engineers and a return to a country of people who make things.

But the era of evaluating technological growth or wellbeing by quantifying the number of inventions a country makes is long gone and fast becoming history. The new way will be a shift from creating inventions to using them innovatively. Today’s economics are more to do with how effectively we use and deploy an invention, rather than creating that invention.  If inventions were the driving force, Israel would be no. 1 . With 3% of the World Population accounting for 25% of the Worlds patents, they really had no competition. But the game has changed. It is not the wheel which is important today, it’s the new and innovative uses of the wheel  which have become importance.  We don’t even bother too much about the fact that we don’t even know who invented the wheel.

The Innovation chain

Per above diagram,  the inventor is mostly confined to step 1. The innovator on the other hand can be involved in Steps 2,3,4, and 6. The manufacturer or producer is in step 6 while the marketer addresses step 7. Thus is the importance of the innovator and his potential to build wealth.

The need to innovate

Why is the understanding of modern innovation phenomenon important to us as current world citizens ? Because

1.     each and every one of us are “Potential innovators.”  Because today, innovation includes ideas, as intellectual property, and not necessarily need be a physical or tangible product.  And

2.     Our innovations have the potential to become our wealth. They are a great tool of wealth creation – even for the most common or lowly citizen of this World.

Can innovation be taught ?

Fortunately, NOT.  Innovation can only be encouraged and guided. It can never be taught, it is inherent.

How can we innovate to create wealth .

As potential innovators, we need to develop in us an awareness of the world around us, the needs of that world and the availability / non availability of tools or technology which can be combined to fulfill that need or utilized in a specific manner for the same. The figure below captures the stages of common innovation development and the required action and skills for that stage.