For one reason or another, we sometimes come up short of our goals.
Failure is part of the human experience, but so is chasing a dream.
Innovation and inspiration have emerged along paths less traveled.
If you only had one chance to make a difference, what would your mission be? For those who aren’t budding entrepreneurs or visionaries, we just might need to tap into the culture of creativity and the stories of persistence around us.
At least one international corporate powerhouse has elected to weave creativity into its identity. In August 2009, Bloomberg Businessweek magazine ran a feature on the Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate, which designed the $2,000 Tata Nano car and the first airline for India’s domestic markets.
Tata Consultancy Services, a division of the larger corporate parent, thrives on a culture of creative dissonance by challenging its employees to confront the status quo. The creative dissatisfaction sewn into Tata Consultancy Services yielded thousands of ideas and hundreds of viable projects in one year.
What use is disruptive thinking to a college student? It is a natural venue for personal fulfillment and professional achievement.
It might seem unlikely that a person could go from scheduling recording artists’ appearances to owning and operating a barbecue sauce company, but it’s happened.
In an online series entitled “Second Act” by The Wall Street Journal, entrepreneurs recount the time they dared to pursue their true interests.
Jim Barbour was a former Sony Music sales rep before he decided to turn his love for cooking into a career. With equal measures of persistence and diligence, Barbour launched FunniBonz barbecue sauce, which is carried in nearly two dozen Whole Foods stores on the East Coast.
Inspiration may come from unlikely sources, but wanting something badly enough to take action and grab the reigns of what you’ve always wanted to do is what makes things happen.
Ideas that change lives, such as designing the proper infrastructure to provide clean drinking water, often require an individual to think outside the box. Maintaining the status quo may fail to result in significant technological advancement or social progress — however you define either of those.
As Albert Einstein once said, “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
Only dreaming of seizing the day isn’t going to cut it. You might just have to blaze a trail, walk off the beaten path and climb a summit to get to where you want to go.
Send your ideas for changing the world to Isaiah at isaiah.mccoy@asu.edu
