Here’s an observation I made the other day about innovation, ideas, thoughts, and invention. It’s out there, but I wanted to share it with you.

The moment of innovation can be viewed as the conception or the beneficial mutation of an existing cell of an idea. There is a moment when an innovative idea exists when just a moment before it didn’t.

Often an innovative idea is incomplete, only a zygote of a mature thought. This innovative thought must be nurtured, fed, and cared for until it is mature and has the ability to survive on its own.

While in this gestative stage the idea is difficult for others to comprehend. Its incompleteness prevents others from understanding its application and ultimate potential.

From the moment of inspiration or conception, the organic innovation’s parent must grow this thought by feeding it with fresh perspectives, new information, and combine it with other mature and immature organic innovations until it develops into a mature thought.

Once mature the organic innovation can venture out into the world on it’s own. It will be received by other people’s perceptions and experiences. It will be held and cared for by others, some with the maternal instincts of its parent and others only in passing curiosity.

An authentic innovative thought at this stage will become viral in nature. It will spread on its own accord without the help or encouragement of its parent. Once someone is exposed or comes in contact with this thought through their eyes and ears, they become infected. This thought will inhabit them and they can pass it on at will to others receptive of this idea.

The more minor or underdeveloped the innovation, the less likely it’s endurance or replicability the organism will have. The more viable and mature the innovation is, the more likely this organism will be passed on from one human host to another. This thought will incubate, be realized, and once again be passed on to another host where the process is repeated.

With modern telecommunications, email, blogs, web sites, print on demand publishing and self publishing, this new social media phenomena allows an organic innovation to be more infectious and spread faster than ever before. A healthy viable thought will take on a life of it’s own and spread immediately worldwide.

Sometimes these innovations will simply run their course and meet with their own genetic dead end. The innovation might fall out of favor, never be fully realized, become obsolete, or be surpassed by its own prodigy.

Occasionally, an innovation comes in contact with another similar, but slightly different thought and it will mate. This procreation produces a prodigy where many of its inferior or recessive genes of the original idea are lost or ignored. The dominant genes of both parent thoughts are combined to produce a thought or idea with a much higher pedigree. This process continually improves its ability to replicate, reproduce, and recombine to grow into an even greater genetically enhanced organic innovation.

Often this organic innovation is accepted, put into practice, and becomes part of our culture. Once an innovation is widely accepted and put into practice, the thought becomes a building block for future innovative offspring that recombine and carry on the genes of its predecessor through generation after generation. These replications and future generations all contribute new positive mutations, spawning still other more infectious organic innovations.

Just as in life, these organic innovations continue to be spread, mutate into even better and more complex organisms. Often, the more powerful ideas will jump species and recombine to propagate in a completely different industry or application. The most successful organic innovations will plant its DNA across many spectrums of applications and will influence and change our lives as we know it for us and our descendants.

So, through email, links, cross-links, threads, copy & pastes, conversations, and pass-alongs, if you think this organic innovative thought has any merit, help it thrive, multiply, infect, propagate, recombine, and evolve into something new and never before seen.That’s Innovation!

Lon S. Safko
Innovative Thinking

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