Intro to the Psychology of Innovation
“We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
- Walt Disney
Dazzled by gold and colorful Asia, and drawn in by the aromatic spices of the Indies, the explorer Christopher Columbus embarked on four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain, in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, where the riches of gold, pearls, and spices awaited him, yet he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not really “discover” the New World—millions of people already lived there—his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of exploration.
Just as Columbus’s curiosity drew him down new paths to discover new lands instead of taking the same old routes, this same curiosity put Albert Einstein on a light beam as he made his delighting discoveries throughout his life. Albert Einstein was known for his curiosity manifesting itself through the questions he used to ask his teachers who nurtured this capacity for asking to satiate his curiosity, which in the end led him to great physics discoveries. Einstein was not the only curious inventor, there was also Graham bell whose curiosity path took him to inventing the telephone, an invention that changed the world its communication forever.
Most inventions started with asking curious questions that opened the doors to inventions and innovations that changed the entire world forever.
“A dream will not become an innovation if there is no realization"
- Ciputra (born 1931), Businessman & philanthropist
Text books are full of discoveries, inventions and innovations that are hundreds of years old, such as the wheel, the compass, the telephone and steam engine. And although the buzz word, “Innovation” has reached our ears recently, the word is as old as the first invention.
Yet, we still cannot deny that it was coincidence that led Columbus to the discovery of new lands. This can’t be the same in business life. Both Individuals and organizations seek the innovation as a basic need in this era and as people’s and organizations’ ways of survival.
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