Innovation: These are the Best of Times? Part 1

Firstly, a few brief observations:

1. Things are bad and getting worse so desperation may reduce resistance to the willingness to try new things.
2. The hunger everyone has for change is fundamentally rewiring the basic relationships we have had with business, finance and government.
3. Trust, the basis of all relationships and civilization is being sorely tested on all levels and relationships we have taken for granted between ourselves and institutions may not survive the upheaval.

So . . .

As much as we may not want to admit it, the only thing that allows for real change is instability and collapse of an existing system – room and momentum need to be created to allow for truly new possibilities.

There is nothing like an unstable and untrustworthy local and global economy to get peoples attention.  In the past, recessions were a little like colds.  You coughed and were stuffed up for a while but knew the cold was going away fairly soon and then things would get back to “normal”.  This RecessDepression feels fundamentally different.  There is little certainty that things will get back to the old  “normal” because too many things are changing and shifting far too quickly for anyone to make an even approximate prediction of what comes next.

We are all becoming much more aware that this is a sea change in the relationships between people and banks, people and financial institutions as well as people and their governing leaders.  The trust (some might call it blind) that we have had in these institutions and the values / processes that they represent was truly hypnotic for decades.  Everyone of us trusted that the people involved were somehow doing their best to make sure both parties in the relationship were okay.  The case can now be made that people are waking up to the fact that this trust is seriously breached if not irreparably broken.

What does all of this mean for innovation and for the processes and support that innovation needs to function well?  Big change becomes possible.

Those who “get” it will respond and get involved in one form or other.  Small in number at the beginning, ranks will grow as the downward spiral continues.  This is one of those rare moments where the old impediments to change can either be swept aside or, better yet, simple gotten around.  Those who don’t “get” it, the great majority of those currently in positions of power and influence, won’t and will be shoved aside, moved around or simply run over.

So it is of utmost importance that those who “get” it find one another and begin the open and far ranging experimentation that is needed to find what we need to meet the serious challenges that we have.

There is simple no other way to make the best use of the end of an old era . . .

Your comments and thoughts are invited.