You are not original!
In spite of the title of this blog post, you are not original, nor would I encourage you to try and be original. There is nothing new under the sun — you have probably heard that before. In the natural world, that is true. Scientists may not have discovered every species of plant or animal, but that doesn’t mean there is anything new, just that they were undiscovered.
In 2007, the iPhone hit the market with a big splash. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in his infamous presentation by saying that Apple had invented multi-touch. That of course is untrue; multi-touch computing has been around in some way since the mid 1980’s. What he did do was to bring together several technologies and merge them into one device in a very unique way. Essentially, the iPhone can be boiled down to the elements of the periodic table. All that we need to create anything already exists in the natural world; we just need to add our unique idea to it.
We all have vision. Some are gifted with a unique vision that allows us to see what would now seem impossible. In the late 1970’s, the founder of Atari had the vision to have a gaming console in every house in America. If you have kids, chances are you have a gaming console of some sort, if not more than one. In the industry I work in, healthcare, there are many great visionaries; healthcare technology would not be where it is today without them.
In your industry, there are great visionaries who paint great pictures of the future. Vision, however, is not relegated to the few who seem to have been born with it in great quantities. We all have vision. As a very simple example, take a minute and think about how you will get home from work today. Pretty simple, right? That is vision. Visualizing something and then either executing or leading others to execute it.
As leaders, it is easy to understand this example, as most of us are empowered in today’s information age to be visionaries at work. How can we create a culture for our teams where vision is recognized, uniqueness is embraced, and people are placed in environments where they get exposure to new and different ideas? The answer is different for all of our collective work situations, but this question should be discussed at leadership meetings on a frequent basis.
This blog post is unique. There is no other writing in the history of the world that puts these specific words in this specific order. This blog post is not, however, original. Of course I am the original author, but Google will tell you that there are dozens of articles written about these ideas. All I did here was take these ideas and put them together in a unique way, put a vision behind it, and launch it. To me, it is a simple as that. If we can do it with pizza ingredients, we can do it with more significant challenges we are faced with. All we need to create unique and innovative solutions already exists. Earth, air, and water … just add vision.
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