7.3 Skills in the 21st Century
backMy 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 folded, eyes closed. He was motionless in that pose until six. Sometimes we asked what he was 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 had over 500 minor 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 fiction. His passion was crossword puzzles, and riddles. He tinkered with several of our household items. He made an electric cooker. It gave us a slight electric shock whenever we used it, 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 an excuse.
| 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 problems in a new way. An invention doesn't inevitably turn 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 it is mainly technological improvement. Computers pervade every aspect of our life, people talk about virtual reality and artificial intelligence. They were nowhere even twenty years ago. Things are changing like crazy. 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 human nature, maybe that's why we are so successful, compared to animals.