Is Innovation Engineering?

This took me a long time to understand.

I have spent a very long time trying to understand how to have good ideas. How to innovate. One could simply spin on one’s office chair, stare at the ceiling and wait for inspiration to strike. However, there are more reliable approaches that can produce a large volume of better ideas supported by good evidence. A long time ago I decided that I would make it my business to understand, apply and record how this is done. I became a specialist in innovation practises.

Or so I thought.

I work within a team who I consider top notch. We look over the horizon as far as we can to predict the future, we identify problems and opportunities and we propose solutions. We innovate every day.

Or do we?

My bubble was burst when I eventually decided that a book, YouTube channel, numerous articles, even more articles, a smartphone game, an Instagram, and a long career in which I have successfully predicted the future and proposed suitable concepts, were sufficient to label me innovator, and perhaps a reasonably competent one at that.

Little did I know.

Flush with my carefully curated skill stack I applied for a new job. A local university had published a vacancy for a professorship, and my ego…