On Innovation

Before you innovate, there must be a sturdy foundation to innovate upon. Before you lay a foundation, fundamental laws must be at work. A company or human being working behind the rose-colored glasses of innovation will always face the undeniable truth that innovation is faulty without a proper infrastructure that supports its networks.

To raise an infrastructure, you need at least three pillars. Etymologically speaking “infrastructure” means: “The installations that form the basis for any operation or system.”

Innovation is an idea with a vast potential for transformation. To innovate, you must make alterations to an existing pattern or form. It is a new method that must follow an original design. The problems start when people use the word original in the wrong context.

Noun: original; plural noun: originals

Something serving as a model or basis for imitations or copies. “The portrait may be a copy of the original”

Or

Adjective: original

Not dependent on other people’s ideas; inventive and unusual.
“A subtle and original thinker.”
Synonyms: innovative, creative, imaginative, inventive

It is essential to differentiate between the two or institutions, companies and individuals run the risk of creating more confusion within their organizations.

For some, to innovate means going back to the drawing board and build from the bottom up. For others innovation means to work your way up from the top, obliterating parts of the base and hope they can still fly. These two types of humans will always have a hard time understanding each other. Unfortunately, these “types” of people must often work together while their own values differ from each other, which creates more confusion and misunderstandings.

If the two entities can come together and use their knowledge to invite a real innovative model based on truth and facts, their infrastructures will inevitably become superstructure.

This is the fundamental and foundational work needed for a super society that is stable, functional, creative and innovative. This is what will inspire communities to imitate or innovate based upon an unshakable foundation that respects the fundamental laws of creation.

Innovation must also rest on organizational and behavioural culture, not just on technology. What makes a great company stems from what each individual, coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, brings to the collective and creative culture of the company.

As a human being, the same process runs under the complex biology or network that is called the human body – its base, on the other hand, is paradoxically a “by-design” simple network of creative genius that still eludes the human intellect. The alchemists of ancient times spent centuries developing insights on “what is primary” and “what is secondary.” Then a few unenlightened pseudo-alchemists started confusing riches with art – “turn lead into gold” for profit.

The human body depends on vital energy sources external to it; like the sun, water, air, and what grows from the earth to sustain itself. We are secondary. An organization must also define what its vital source of energy is. Hence, it must establish the proper environment to attract the right people (the right food) to invite and create a prosperous, creative flow inside a network that never strays away from the source and values that will contribute to nourishing a healthy culture and future.

We must look at the bigger picture without ever losing grasp of the roots that lie hidden beneath the surface; they are our fundamental basis for life.

Tash’s Salt.

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