You don’t need to be an entrepreneur or venture capitalist to have an impact on innovation. The definition of innovation is 1. origination 2. new idea or method.   Every day you are exposed to new ideas, albeit not always world changing ones, but original thinking nonetheless.  How you respond to your friend, co-worker, and child about his or her unique idea has a direct impact on the future of innovation.  Perhaps you are satisfied with the level of innovation today.  Besides the fact that encouraging creativity warms hearts, there may be an even greater reason to do so.

Consider the recent post by Chris Shipley, innovation advocate and founder of Guidewire Group, who works with thousands of startups around the world.  She’s disappointed by the applications for a worldwide startup competition.  Seems that there are a lot of me-too ideas, and few original thoughts.  Some $6T is poured into new ideas every year regardless as to how good they are.  Do you want that money to go to the 100th niche social media site?

Sir Ken Robinson, a leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation, argues that our worldwide education system is at fault.  In his most recent TED talk he calls for a worldwide education revolution. He argues that every education system in the world is being reformed, but that’s not enough.   “Human communities depend on a diversity of talent” and our schools must enable this in order for creativity to flourish.

I was at IDEO this week and was told a story about their work with one of their clients that was looking to improve a brain surgery device.  The patient is awake during the surgery and a nurse asks questions of the patient that directs the surgery.  The nurse holds the patient’s hand with one hand and writes the answers with the other.  Initially, the company wanted to develop a new and improved device to capture the answers using a stylus, which would prevent the nurse from holding the patient’s hand.  However, IDEO pointed out that holding the patient’s hand was critical to the accuracy of the responses.  The team developed a touch screen instead.  It often takes a new eye on an old way of doing things for innovation that is most effective.

So, the next time you are presented with a new idea (probably today), resist the urge to knock it down.  Your day to day enthusiasm for creative thinking will increase the energy around new ideas, making life more interesting, and maybe even fueling a world changing innovation.  And how cool is that?
Innovation, a photo by Vermin Inc on Flickr.