The Rotman professor and pioneer in the emerging field of strategic foresight explains why desire is the true driving force of innovation
You believe that everything we know and desire is the outcome of a single discovery that was made 1.9 million years ago. Please explain.
The discovery you speak of is fire, and it represents the first moment in history when civilization transformed itself. The transformational part came when humans discovered that fire could be put to beneficial uses, which vastly changed their behaviour and expectations. What is interesting to note is that fire already existed in the environment, it just wasn’t being put to a beneficial use. People came across it and observed it, but it had no ‘media’ for humanity, because we didn’t use it to accomplish anything.
Try this: lift your hand in the air, about head high, and then let it drop around your body. This is the phenomenon of gravity. Now, you can wait for a theory of what you just experienced to arise, or you can proceed in life knowing how gravity feels, and what you have to do to master it. I propose that we can apply this same attitude to business and the design of innovation outcomes: engage in the discovery of manifestations of what is happening, understand the values that people are after, then design and deliver new opportunities for new manifestations.
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]