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How to Innovate - Treat Ideas like a ‘Newborn’


I am an 18 month old father (my son was born 18 months ago ), and my life changed completely, for better, after becoming a father. 

Ok, now why do I say ‘better’?  

I get to sleep less, have to alter my plans to take him to the doctor, expenses have gone up, unplanned fun outings have reduced to zero, and I hum ‘wheels on the bus’ while taking bath. But life still feels ‘better’ – holding him in my arms and watching him grow everyday is such a joy! A bit of reading revealed that ‘life is better’ feeling is result of better balanced Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, and Endorphins. (The engineer in me would not just ‘be happy’ and had to find the root cause).

To be truthful, newborns / infants are a lot of work, they are messy, fragile, need lot of TLC, you need a village to ‘raise a child’ and you don’t know how they will turn out. But they have possibilities and potential! 

Innovative ideas are the same – they are messy, fragile, they keep you up at night, need lot of TLC, you need a village to ‘pursue an innovative idea, and you don’t know how they will turn out. But they also have possibilities and potential! 

Similar to a newborn, ‘Innovative ideas’ need a nurturing environment. They need to be taken care of, disruption they may cause to ‘set life’ of an Organization needs to be treated kindly, failures of ideas need to be looked at as ‘learning opportunities’ and it needs a ‘village’ to raise innovative ideas (everyone from the organization who can contribute, in their own little ways, even when the idea may not be theirs).

Why would an Organization go through all this with no ‘ROI’ guarantee? Because ‘Innovative Ideas’ open   Possibilities and have Potential to make an Organization better, better at everything! 


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