Читать книгу Driving Eureka! - Doug Hall - Страница 53

We are confident that we will change the world by enabling innovation by everyone, everywhere, every day. What we don’t know is how long it will take. It took 30 years for Dr. Deming’s teachings in Japan to be recognized in the Western world. No matter how long it takes, we—the Innovation Engineering Pioneers, the Innovation Engineering Institute organizing body, and myself—are in for the duration.

The reason we are confident that we will change the world is that we have a Plan A and a Plan B. Plan A is to teach Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers, who are currently in positions of authority, the Innovation Engineering mindset of system-driven innovation. Plan B is to teach undergraduate and graduate students on college campuses around the world. As I tell them, “If Plan A doesn’t work, you are my backup plan—you’re just going to have to do a takeover.”

I’d love to be able to say Innovation Engineering was the result of a grand vision. But that’s not how it happened. It was created by a group of pioneers with a feeling that there had to be a better way to innovate. The movement was helped by the availability of massive volumes of quantitative data on innovation. However, the real key to success was a never-ending curiosity to learn more. And it is this passion for learning that is the key to our past and current success. As Dr. Deming said:

It’s so easy to do nothing. It’s a challenge to do something. Learning is not compulsory; it’s voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it’s voluntary.

But to survive, we must learn. The penalty for ignorance is that you get beat up. There is no substitute for knowledge. Yet time is of the essence.

Turn the page or flip the screen, and let’s get started with education on some basic innovation definitions. But first . . .