Innovation

There’s an old psychological technique to help a person free-up their thinking. It’s simple and seems, at first blush, totally silly and useless.

First: Look around you.

Second: Name, out loud, what you see.

Third: Make sure each name is Not what the object is usually called. (ex., looking at a hat, you say elephant.)

The effort to misname things loosens your creativity and promotes innovation.

Here’s a site that has many tools to aid innovation.

In a recent Fortune interview, Larry Page (co-founder of Google), commenting on innovation, said, “My argument is that people aren’t thinking that way.

“Instead, it’s sort of like ‘We are captives of the world, and whatever happens, happens.’ That’s not the case at all. It really matters whether people are working on generating clean energy or improving transportation or making the Internet work better and all those things. And small groups of people can have a really huge impact.”

And, from an article entitled, Relationship Between Disarmament and Development, the critical importance of innovative thinking and action are stressed:

“We witness around us an accelerating two-fold process of disintegration and integration. There is a breakdown of exhausted and inappropriate ideals, of archaic institutions and ideas, of empty customs and beliefs, while at the same time there is a burgeoning of new ideas, fresh discoveries in science, insights into human behavior, innovations in the management of human affairs. These perturbations and crises could give birth to new hope and promise and must be seen as opportunities for greater measures of creative human effort. The real enemies are not other nation-states, but ignorance, prejudice, greed, poverty, and disease. Such adversaries are far more worthy of our human and natural resources.”

Baha’i International Community, 1987 Aug 24, Relationship Between Disarmament and Development