A System Based on Innovation

Let me ask you something that might put you mind to work while you’re reading this article: What would living in a system based on innovation be like?

Ok…now that you’ve read my question I advice you to take a few seconds and give yourself an answer…All done? Not yet..ok..I’ll stand by. Ok, now? Perfect. Let’s go on.

To better understand the meaning of the term innovation I’ve looked it up in the dictionary and got the following explanation:

INNOVATION, innovations, noun, f, Novelty, change, transformation ♦ Solving a technical or organizational problem in order to enhance work (productivity), achieve technical improvement or rationalization of the applied solutions.

Let’s look at what we have here:
“Solving a technical or organizational problem in order to enhance work (productivity), achieve technical improvement or rationalization of the applied solutions.”

And now let’s imagine a theoretical experiment (because theoretical sounds safer, practically you’d have to risk)
If you’re a manager and you’re running a business, or you’re a department leader and you have a few employees under your direction and instead of punishing them for arriving late at work, not being dressed like you’d want them to, their phone ringing too often, their breaks are too long, etc. I challenge you to try and bend their rules a little. Forget for a moment about all those “workplace rules” and suggest to your employees that once every 2 or 3 months they are to come up with an innovation regarding their job. Anything that “solves a problem” and enhances productivity. And if they won’t do it, they will suffer some penalties (those are up to you).

In my two and a half years working in a corporation I’ve had the “honor” to see my colleagues work hours after hours doing whatever their superior said for the sole reason that “the boss said so” and they did not have the right to refuse. People who had the potential to change things, who could have done something different, innovating in their daily work, simply could not change anything because “the boss said so”.

And I believe that if the innovation theory would be imposed from early on in someone’s education we might very well witness a change for the better.

Innovation | Shutterstock