INVENTING FUTURE SUCCESS

How often has a friend come up to you with some brilliant half baked idea to change the world?

How often have you picked that idea apart and claimed it unworthy of your time or effort?

Something I fear when the country is in desperate need of creative and original thinking is that we (Americans) are falling victim to our own capitalist and egotistical dispositions. 

This silly notion of permission, what I mean is, we increasingly require more standards and proof in order to deem something of quality and deserving of our involvement. We say to our young innovators you haven't payed your dues and therefore your ideas or no good. 

What we're really saying or doing is padding our own ego. "That's beneath me" we think to ourselves, but it's that exact mentality that threatens to economically bankrupt us and stymie any new growth. 

When Bill Gates created the Altair Emulator for the MIT 8800 do you think he had his white papers in order. In fact he hadn't even written the code when he first approached MIT's Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems with the idea.

Would Steve Jobs have founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne after dropping out of college and taking a religious and psychedelic journey in India. 

Would Jay Z a crack dealer on the streets of Brooklyn have become the iconic musical artist of our time. 

Or Thomas Hart Benton pioneered the Regionalist art movement. 

Would Carolyn Bertozzi ever start Redwood Biosience and work to manipulate the processes within live cells awarding her the MIT prize for outstanding inventor if she had waited for permission. 

These visionaries with seemingly no similarity shared one common thread, they chose to be brave, adopting the rare quality that drives every change maker to bet against the world. They stopped caring about popular, staved away from the conventional, and invested everything they had into innovation proving that great ideas come from all backgrounds, age, and level of status.

My point here is that anything new or "original" should feel somewhat alien (it shouldn't be liked or understood by everyone), nor should it attempt to answer every question. I mean if it's truly new to the world how could it. 

Remember no idea is above being called stupid, it's just a matter of consistency that makes or breaks us. It's far more courageous to bare our deepest desires to the world to be judged, then to follow in someone's footsteps. That's why through failure or success innovators have always been rewarded, earning a deep respect amongst their peers.

My hope is that more people will take to creating or at least be far more open to support those who do.