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Innovation: Still More Frustration than Inspiration

Inventors rarely have those hallowed ‘Eureka’ moments. Developing an idea and making it work takes time and patience. While technology develops fast, successful ideas take time to finesse. 
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What’s the Latest Development?

British inventor James Dyson is on a world tour, promoting his new creation: A water faucet with a built-in hand-dryer. Dyson is the billionaire designer of the famous bagless vacuum cleaner and an example of how perspiration in the pursuit of a long-term goal can pay enormous benefits in return, whether than means a billion dollars or the satisfaction of understanding complex systems. “My inspiration to invent and redesign is fed through frustration,” said Dyson. “I spend a lot of time taking things apart and putting them back together, considering how they work and how they might work better.”

What’s the Big Idea?

While popular culture mythologizes inventors as lone wolves who are suddenly struck with moments of inspiration akin to divine revelation, creating innovative goods, whether through engineering or through painting, requires a willingness to tinker and fail. “The most important thing you need when redesigning something is perseverance and a willingness to fail. Inventors rarely have those hallowed ‘Eureka’ moments. Developing an idea and making it work takes time and patience.” While technology develops fast, successful ideas take time to finesse. 

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

Read it at BBC Future

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Guest Thinkers
Happy New Year
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.
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