My father was an electrician. He didn’t go to secondary school or higher education, only to a vocational school. He was pretty much lazy. When I went home from school I would find him on the sofa, in a dead-man pose: lying on his back, his hands are folded, eyes are closed. He was motionless in that pose until six. Sometimes we asked what was he doing. He would say, "I don't sleep. I am thinking". Maybe he was right.

As I mentioned, he was lazy. This was the reason he always searched for ways to make his job simpler and easier. He submitted over 500 inventions and had a lot of patents. He solved issues that electrical engineers didn't see and couldn't solve. With his analytical mind he improved tools and devices, so they did the same work better, faster or safer. Innovation comes from laziness, I conclude.

He wouldn't read books, especially not fictions. His passion was crossword puzzles, riddles and solving mysteries. As a tinkerer he was responsible for several of our  household items. He made an electric cooker. It gave us a slight electric shock whenever we used, he didn't care. It was not dangerous, he said. He built a keyboard for me, as I took piano lessons. The body of the keyboard was made from an old bedside. The keys were green and brown instead of black and white, as this is what he found in the scrapyard. He spent several months on the instrument. At the very moment it gave out musical sounds, he lost his interest. It was never finished. He turned his attention to other problems, my piano lessons were only a pretext.

Innovation is making existing things, objects or processes better, faster cheaper, or whatever. In one word: innovation is improvement. Invention is a forerunner of innovation, solving problem in a new way. An invention doesn't inevitably turns into innovation (for example too expensive to introduce).  Patents are exclusive rights to use inventions.

In the past the most important innovations were the use of fire, introduction of agriculture, then inventing machines. In the present the playground is mainly technology. Computers pervade every aspect of our life, people talk about virtual reality and artifical intelligence. They were nowhere even twenty years ago. Things are changing like crazy, in an accelerating way. In the future innovation will play an even bigger role. Innovations make individuals and companies successful.  Economies rely on their human resources more than on natural resources. Innovation is part of the human nature, maybe thats' why we are so successful, compared to animals.

My father would be contented with the internet technology, I guess.

When he died, I kept only two things from his stuff. One is a very old compass. It is always great to know where are you and which way to head. The other is his brain scan. Just a reminder to never stop using and improving my brain. To never stop looking for new ways to make things better. My legacy.