Innovation

I was surprisingly inspired by John and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s new book, This Moment on Earth, coming out March 26th, 2007. This inspiration snuck up on me around the third chapter. Prior to that, I found the book good, well worth reading, but a little bit like just one more book outlining what humans are doing wrong. Starting around the third chapter I realized I was referring to the book in several conversations and several blog diaries and that several of the people and organizations featured in the book I mentally filed away as worth looking into for future political connections, diaries and general research.

In short, almost without my realizing it, John Kerry’s book was getting into my brain and inspiring me. The book starts a bit dull but by the end is excellent.

My earliest impression, from the press material that arrived with the book and from the introduction, was that this book promised something really new and welcome. The book was billed as the next step in the evolution of the environmental debate. I was ready for a book that took as given the problems and focused primarily on solutions. Having been through way too many “debates” online where I yet again outlined the very clear scientific evidence for global warming only to have yet the same false claims that global warming was some kind of scam or myth (these claims are never backed up by scientific evidence of any substance), I really was ready to have a book that moved beyond that.

I really liked this one folks.

If you want to keep up with what the pragmatic, structured, organized, thoughtful people who design build and maintain the behind the scenes critical infrastructure that you, me and all of us count on for EVERY FACET of our daily lives, I highly suggest you add Control Global to your "favorites" list.

A few favorite quotes from the article as a tease to encourage you to read the whole thing :

Engineering solves problems. Innovation creates problems. Most innovation comes from people outside the domain of expertise. Innovators can be anybody.

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We think that this is the innovation age. Not so. We forget fish hooks, fire and the wheel. Twice as many patents were issued in the early 1900s as today. Distance, time and familiarity diminish importance.
My dad would talk to some of my visiting young MBAs. They would complain about the D.C. politics, the latest recession and tax laws. After they left, Dad would say, “Don’t they know this has happened five times before?”

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What does this mean to the working process engineer? We should not dwell on the latest standards and play in our sandbox. Putting change into a process because we want to try out the latest computer is not progress. We, as well as our management, should think about what we do and why we are doing it. Innovation is not just components, systems and toys. Innovation also is a part of how we think.