Saturday finds me somewhat recovered from a nasty upper respiratory infection that arrived with haste Tuesday afternoon while I was taking a nap. Honestly, napping usually makes me feel better, but not this time. I’ve never had an infection set in that fast, nor during what was supposed to be a restful nap. Speculation at breakfast every morning concerning what caused my viral infestation ranged from overheating myself, to an allergic reaction to something at the garden we visited on Tuesday afternoon. I honestly don’t know what happened, but I know I am glad that it is slowly leaving my system. Maybe I won’t be sleeping nearly 23 hours a day anymore and actually get to enjoy some of the places my classmates have been telling me about in the mornings.
All is not completely lost though. During my necessary confinement (which resulted in MUCH needed rest, sleep and the intake of copious amounts of water... I think I might be somewhat aquatic in nature now) I was able to keep up on most of the readings, although I did have trouble getting to some of them. Strangely today I am having no trouble reaching the elusive links of earlier this week.
The first group of articles talked about innovation, what it is, and what it is not. Star example was the Thailand Cave rescue of a school kids, and then Elon Musk taking a very serious situation and using it to grandstand. What was his actual intention? I don’t know. But it certainly came off as rude idiocy on his part in having something built without understanding the situation or having any respect for an expert rescue fully in progress. For most people innovation denotes something which is created that is beneficial to the populace, rather than to whoever created it. In situations where someone in power offers help, offer the resources to those in charge, because as an outsider, you lack knowledge of the situation and all the inherent myriad complications. Bow that ego to those who know, instead of flexing corporate muscles. It’s the difference between innovation and profit/image building which is what the private sector is trying to do.
It could be said that innovation is more closely tied to community, rather than the private sector which deals with image, profit and reputation building. These things can masquerade as innovation, but in the end equates to “how much money can we make off this new product?” Innovation is beneficial to community as the primary focus, not a company looking in a our pocket books with greedy eyes. While one could point to Steve Jobs and his touch screen, when the iPod was first released, it was highly affordable. This was something that was in everyone’s hands by Christmas and it changed the very nature of owning a cell phone. The sky high prices (and the disturbing trend to ‘lending’ options) for the iPhone took off after his death, and has ceased to move forward in any real way worth mentioning. Affordable hand held computers, with touch screens, was innovative. The ‘innovations’ that have happened since the death of Steve Jobs has been a misuse of the word. If anything, it has gone entirely in the opposite direction.
Outside of the private sector, innovation happens when something new is needed to bridge some sort of a gap, and it tends to happen naturally from what I have seen. The community does not always look to local government to fix something, but sometimes does it on it’s own. Just speaking from my own time as a library manager in a rural area, many programs already exist to be the legs for the elderly who can’t get out to the grocery store or get their mail from the post office. It might start as one person helping out a neighbor and turn into something bigger. For my library, it started as one person doing library runs for shut-ins who had trouble getting to places they needed to go. The library was one such place. The young man would come in and pick up a stack of books for people he did delivery runs for. Eventually the library became a support leg for this program, and other volunteers stepped up to spread out the area that could be reached. I personally didn’t start this program, but I did help boost it with the library’s support. It was started to fill a need in the community, and was innovative simply because someone took existing beneficial resources and tied them together. It wasn’t just one person, but a group of collaborative work that resulted in a new program. One that multiple people and communities found very helpful.
I suspect that every person asked is going to have a different variation of a definition for what innovation is. Business sectors will look at it as essential for industry growth. Community looks at it as something necessary and beneficial for them on a personal level. Libraries tend to look at it as something that happens every day to fill an unexpected need, often a quick roughshod program that comes into existence spur of the moment. A lot of my best programs happened that way because of a need of just one person. Public librarians don’t always have the time prototype and work with an idea, but a lot of times they do stick things together with creative duct tape and revisit to shore it up with what they have on hand. Using what they have in new ways to fill a gap. For me that’s innovation.
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