Skip to content
Technology & Innovation —

Innovating the Concept of Innovation

Some of the world’s most innovative organizations gathered this week in Washington to discuss the new paradigm of innovation and why it is no longer an ethereal pursuit.
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?

Some of the world’s most innovative organizations gathered last week in Washington DC to discuss American competitiveness and what could be a new understanding of innovation itself. DARPA, the military’s experimental R&D wing which is working on a glider that can reach New York from California in 11 minutes, says its key to innovation is ‘mashing together basic sciences and driving application’. That means finding educated people who also have a strong desire to make new things.

What’s the Big Idea?

At the conference, Google agreed that innovation is a byproduct of investment in human capital. The way they see it, a single high school dropout could cost the nation essential life-saving technology. “And the idea of innovation itself—beyond the people, the inventions and the technology—needs to change. We have to break a long-standing impression that innovation is this ethereal thing.” While there is no formula for innovation, we know that we can at least bring together important elements to increase the likelihood of big advances.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
Related
Surprising Science
Business Model innovation for the Health Insurance Provider
Our idea offers a solution for how the for-profit health insurance provider business model can be innovated on to not only allow for active participation and collaboration by policyholders in the creation of value, generate additional revenue and help finance the cost of health plans, but also provide for the realization of an improved, and invariably more productive alignment of interests and strategies across the entire healthcare value network.
Surprising Science
Business Model innovation for the Health Insurance Provider
Our idea offers a solution for how the for-profit health insurance provider business model can be innovated on to not only allow for active participation and collaboration by policyholders in the creation of value, generate additional revenue and help finance the cost of health plans, but also provide for the realization of an improved, and invariably more productive alignment of interests and strategies across the entire healthcare value network.
Up Next
The End of War
In a new book, John Horgan argues that humans didn’t begin to fight with each other until 10-12,000 years ago. Horgan seeks a scientific explanation for how humans became lethal through culture, not biology, and how we can choose to end it.