Innovation and lies
Several years ago I was involved in the tech startup community. It was mostly a ‘bro’ space. By bro, I mean men who appeared to be blinded by the light of bright shiny new things, and willing to sell their souls, through stories, exaggerations and ego riots to get their star in the tech hall of fame.
I could not believe my eyes and experience. The back-slapping, gee up followed by backstabbing games.
The rattle of the innovation sabre hopefully elevating someone onto a platform of giddy heights and status.
Forgetting all the while that innovation arrives through a moment in time when the things that make innovation possible, the substrate, had to be invented as well.
How easy it is to forget those creators. How easy is it to become the hero in the story of innovation, while standing on the invisible-to-most backs of those who toiled yesterday, often silently and without acclaim?
To claim a company as innovative when for the most part it is created by purchasing others’ innovations or driving another innovation to the wall through money and power is to continue to propagate this ridiculous myth.
Innovation takes many, working in Kairos time, often funded by public money.
It is not a holy grail, or the key to enlightenment. It is how life works. Novelty. Change. Ideas in time, through collaboration and synergy.
True innovation, a collective activity, is beautiful.
To hand the keys to humanity’s future to a few tech bros because of their innovation is to be swept into the web of lies that continues to hold our house of cards up.
Photo taken October 4th 2022
