Every so often, I run across a person who is an actual innovator in their particular fields. Most often, these are professors who have new ideas who actually work towards actualizing their ideas. In other situations, though, these are young students who have spent their growing up years developing various skill sets and evolving their learning in order to contribute to the world. I had the pleasure of such a conversation recently, and I realized some intriguing aspects to the world as seen by a young discoverer.

Speed

One issue is the issue of speed. For many young innovators, they assume correctly that speed is important. This speed is about working through problems and staying ahead of the competition. There is no stasis in true competition, and there are many in the world who are pursuing solving many of the same issues in a field. Others are even more innovative and see problems in fresh ways and are conceptualizing whole new mental and conceptual models in particular areas.

The challenge though is that all speed comes at certain costs. Speed may mean less depth in terms of investigating a problem. It may mean pursuing the easier solutions rather than the most difficult ones. It may mean pursuing quick solutions where maybe a greater time investment would be more critical.

A Lack of Experience

Many younger innovators, because of their youth, underestimate the competition. They assume that they have a corner on the market for a particular concept. They have knowledge gaps in terms of their fields, much less relevant other fields which may have implications on their own work and research. They may over-simplify how much work it takes to actually bring something to market. Many, unless they are protected by a parent or manager, are not aware of how to work within the investor environment. (How does one encourage others to invest or bet on one’s own ideas or direction of research?) They have a sense of the criticality of mixed skill sets, but they are not patient enough to acquire the high-level knowledge in various fields through formal channels.

Further, most are not aware of the creativity curve…of the patterns found in people for deep innovations, how creativity is maintained over a lifetime, and the market levers (oftentimes) to structure the creativity.

Also, my sense is that young inventors may or may not be aware of the critical need to collaborate on teams. Innovations happen in environments of collaboration. They are not achieved in isolation. (Delusions of grandeur may grow in isolation, along with fairytales of one’s own genius…but true innovation really involves engagement with the world of facts and the real and true problem-solving.)

Protecting Time

In my recent conversation, the young innovator had a clear sense of his need to protect time. He was actually glad that he never fell into the gaming and television consumption of his peers. This way, he was able to actually immerse into a range of sciences and pursue multiple undergraduate degrees. He was wanting to join a company that would help him hone his talent and help him pursue further patents. He was very conscious of his choice-making about his time expenditures. That’s the way to make the most of time.

Continuous Learning

Most of the innovators I’ve met are clear about the need for continuous, life-long learning, but the hard part is getting the level of sophisticated learning without committing to long-term degrees at the graduate levels. Many find university stultifying. The challenge here though is tapping a wide variety of learning across a variety of domain fields in order to benefit the creative mind which is constantly striving to problem-solve and invent. In a sense, there is an artificiality in how learning domains have evolved, and these artificial barriers may limit the achievements of individuals in particular fields.

Keeping the Creativity Spark Alive

Finally, creators need to constantly feed their muses. They need to constantly learn about the truths of the world. They also need to find situations that present practical problems against which they can test their learning, collaboration, and skills. They need to find business and other organizations that would fund their work and encourage their research.

There are many ways to achieve a creative life, and there are many ways to achieve those aims. While I suggest that young innovators might benefit from knowing what the world says, I sometimes also think the diametric opposite. It’s okay to come at problems very naively and innocently as long as there is the will, talent, and persistence to pursue the work. There are many ways to think of a thing. And accepting a particular mental model results in inadvertently closing off some paths.

We did agree on one thing though—that that hunger to discover and innovate is rare and difficult to find. It’s rare in any generation. The person I spoke with thought it was even more rare in his generation because so much of human energies and interests are dissipated in other areas. Maybe so. Sadly.