Today's post written by YV Intern Yoseph Ayele.
Who is going to cure cancer or AIDS? Or who is going to develop the next best technology after Apple, Facebook, or Twitter? Someone will, and that person may be even you. But that is leaving too much to chances, and out of almost seven billion people living in the world today, it is going to be a select few who will claim such successes. So are the rest of us excluded from the exclusive club of individuals who bring cutting-edge solutions to the world’s needs? The simple and true answer is a NO. The individuals who will create the cure for cancer and AIDS are inventors. Invention refers to developing a non-existing product from scratch, either from your own ideas or scientific research. Bill Gates is an inventor: he created Microsoft. Such individuals end up inventing only a few times in their life time. A lot of invention attempts fail and very few succeed. Still, most successful inventions can turn out to be of lesser value to society. It takes many months, years, and decades to invent successfully.
You and I can aspire to be inventors. But there is something else we can do starting today. We can innovate. Innovation is when we use all that is currently existing (most of it invented by others) to fill gaps in ways that have not been done before. We are not creating something from scratch. Instead, we are finding new ways to use what is available to create value in ways not tried before. As innovators, we fill gaps using existing resources that others have not paid attention to.
Everyone can be an innovator. For example, one college student noticed that children from low-income communities were a few grades behind in school compared to their higher-income peers and such education inequality deeply troubled her. At the same time, she saw highly educated college graduates who aspired to serve their communities but ended up taking lucrative jobs because there wasn’t a program that allowed them to tackle education inequality. She identified a large gap: education inequality. She decided to fill that gap with existing but untapped resources: educated college graduates who were qualified to teach. The person’s name is Wendy Kopp, and the teacher corps program is Teach For America. Wendy Kopp is an innovator. She found a way to deploy an existing resource to meet a massive demand. Her innovation has now become a nation-wide organization that has sent over 20,000 qualified teachers to low-income communities.
Innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, and by everyone. But one may ask: how do you actually innovate?
One approach is to follow these simple steps:
1. Think of the world how it ought to be. What will the best school or college look like, or the best community? Look around you and imagine the best possible scenario for your surrounding.
2. Go out and learn what the current situation is. Understand what the problems, challenges, and all the things that are different from what you first imagined. Ask yourself and those around you why those problems exist and persist. Determine what the source of the problems. Identify the discrepancy between how the world is and how it ought to be.
3. Look for existing resources, knowledge, expertise, activities, and anything within your reach or your friend’s reach that can fill the discrepancy you identified. Often times, such resources are not financial. It could be your time, or information that is available, or materials and resources that are thrown away. You will be surprised that many have not made the connection between these resources and the gaps you have identified.
After these steps, you have recognized a problem and why it exists, you have a possible solution, and you have identified resources within your reach that can address that problem. You are now an innovator. Your next step is to make it happen. Then, you become an entrepreneur.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/magnetbox/3261773180/
Who is going to cure cancer or AIDS? Or who is going to develop the next best technology after Apple, Facebook, or Twitter? Someone will, and that person may be even you. But that is leaving too much to chances, and out of almost seven billion people living in the world today, it is going to be a select few who will claim such successes. So are the rest of us excluded from the exclusive club of individuals who bring cutting-edge solutions to the world’s needs? The simple and true answer is a NO. The individuals who will create the cure for cancer and AIDS are inventors. Invention refers to developing a non-existing product from scratch, either from your own ideas or scientific research. Bill Gates is an inventor: he created Microsoft. Such individuals end up inventing only a few times in their life time. A lot of invention attempts fail and very few succeed. Still, most successful inventions can turn out to be of lesser value to society. It takes many months, years, and decades to invent successfully.
You and I can aspire to be inventors. But there is something else we can do starting today. We can innovate. Innovation is when we use all that is currently existing (most of it invented by others) to fill gaps in ways that have not been done before. We are not creating something from scratch. Instead, we are finding new ways to use what is available to create value in ways not tried before. As innovators, we fill gaps using existing resources that others have not paid attention to.
Everyone can be an innovator. For example, one college student noticed that children from low-income communities were a few grades behind in school compared to their higher-income peers and such education inequality deeply troubled her. At the same time, she saw highly educated college graduates who aspired to serve their communities but ended up taking lucrative jobs because there wasn’t a program that allowed them to tackle education inequality. She identified a large gap: education inequality. She decided to fill that gap with existing but untapped resources: educated college graduates who were qualified to teach. The person’s name is Wendy Kopp, and the teacher corps program is Teach For America. Wendy Kopp is an innovator. She found a way to deploy an existing resource to meet a massive demand. Her innovation has now become a nation-wide organization that has sent over 20,000 qualified teachers to low-income communities.
Innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, and by everyone. But one may ask: how do you actually innovate?
One approach is to follow these simple steps:
1. Think of the world how it ought to be. What will the best school or college look like, or the best community? Look around you and imagine the best possible scenario for your surrounding.
2. Go out and learn what the current situation is. Understand what the problems, challenges, and all the things that are different from what you first imagined. Ask yourself and those around you why those problems exist and persist. Determine what the source of the problems. Identify the discrepancy between how the world is and how it ought to be.
3. Look for existing resources, knowledge, expertise, activities, and anything within your reach or your friend’s reach that can fill the discrepancy you identified. Often times, such resources are not financial. It could be your time, or information that is available, or materials and resources that are thrown away. You will be surprised that many have not made the connection between these resources and the gaps you have identified.
After these steps, you have recognized a problem and why it exists, you have a possible solution, and you have identified resources within your reach that can address that problem. You are now an innovator. Your next step is to make it happen. Then, you become an entrepreneur.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/magnetbox/3261773180/
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