innovation

When you’re focused on something few others are thinking about, you find yourself constantly making the case to yourself and others that your vision is worth pursuing and worthy of other people’s attention. This ongoing need to justify your work creates a significant emotional overhead.

A yearning for innovation requires real exploration. It requires a persistent search to try (and fail) to move your understanding forward with a new tool, a new technique, a new insight. Sadly, the first innovation often isn’t even all that helpful, but may well provide a path to ones that are. This is an idea that Steven Johnson of Where Good Idea... See more

Almost everything that makes up our world first appeared in a solitary head—the innovations, the tools, the images, the stories, the prophecies, and religions—it did not come from the center, it came from those who ran from it.

P&G used to have somebody in charge of what they called commercial innovation, which is broadly defined as selling your product in different ways, without fundamentally changing the product itself.

Rail travel is a great example of an industry that is ripe for commercial innovation.

In Germany they have the BahnCard. A 25, 50, or 100 BahnCard are... See more