Innovation: What Would Grandma Say?

Yesterday as I reflected on my Grandma’s life, I learned that new technologies take longer than we think to make it to market, if at all, or to become popularized and cashed-in on their commercial value.

I’m sure you’ve heard the adage: Is there really anything new under sun?

I’m sticking with Grandma’s leadership this week: old wisdom is the new wisdom. She always said, hold onto your clothes long enough and they will come back in style. I have to admit I have some of her hats and coats from the 40s that I have worn recently!  I also wished I’d kept my fry boots – they’d be back in style and worth a fortune! Yet they were my sole present for Christmas one year when I was in high school, as my parents struggled to make ends meet raising six kids.

It’s all about perspective. Innovation is not about invention. It’s about taking an invention and making it useful, repurposing it and/or commercializing it.

So, I ask you – what exists right in front of you that you could view differently – whether it is a product, a problem, an employee, or your relationship with a family member? What is something that you can change about your life or business that would give you more money in the bank, greater productivity or satisfaction? These are different faces of the same coin. They are all about changing the energy of your current situation.

If you want your business or life to be different – The ultimate question is, how do you take what you have and make it different or conceive of it differently? This is innovation grandma-style – transform the old into the present for future wear-ability and endurance.

© Copyright 2011 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved. www.sagelead.com

Grandma’s Life: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t Changed?

My Grandmother was born in 1899 and died in 1991, with a full life at 92 ½ years of age. My daughter was born in 1997, 102 years after my grandmother.

I was talking with my daughter today about embracing change – how this is one of the most important skills for life, particularly for her generation. I used a few examples of changes that took place in Grandma’s life to illustrate what she had to adapt to and how radically her life changed. I mentioned flying, cars, TV. They didn’t exist at all or in the form we know it when she was born. There are many other items she witnessed come into usage: modern refrigerators, dishwashers, ovens, etc. What we take for granted today were radical changes that impacted Grandma’s life – whether it was saving her time on daily chores, giving her access to entertainment, knowledge or greater freedom in traveling. She experienced as many radical changes in 90+ years as we have in the 20 years since her death.

I wondered how fast and new these inventions really were. So, I searched the Internet that Grandma never knew. Here is what I discovered:

1866 First prototype of a steam engine, which would later evolve to the automobile; cars commercialized in the 1920s.

400 BC first curiosity with flight, Leonardo DaVinci’s theories of flight 1480s; first Wright brothers’ flight 1903; airplane flights commercialized 1930s

1878 First concept of an image in motion; 1950s Television was commercialized

1947 Genesis of technology that was the basis for cell phones; commercialized in the mid 1990s

1965 First development of technology used to construct the Internet; popularized in the 1990s; commercialization of products via “the web” 2000s

Many of the technologies we use today seemed to have just been invented and yet parts of the technologies have existed in different forms or changed for commercial exploitation. What’s stayed constant from Grandma’s to my daughter’s life is ongoing experimentation, improvement, and evolution for greater adaptability. In all cases, the need to master handling change has not changed. It is just becoming more of an imperative as the pace of change is increasing and becoming more widespread – not just with product life cycles shortening, but with societal and political institutions requiring change to keep pace with the implications technology imposes.

I wonder – what Grandma would say about the world we live in today?

© Copyright 2011 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved. www.sagelead.com