Where does innovation come from?

Innovation is a necessary and very interesting thing. I've had the good fortune to witness innovation through both my personal, as my wife is an innovator - a mechanical engineer specializing in biomatierals. I've also been fortunate to observe the power of innovation.

In my wife's case, I've seen her at work. She sometimes takes a safe, tried and true approach to innovation, taking existing materials, existing solutions, and applied those things to different problems. It's a simple idea - "Hey, the nature of that problem is similiar this other problem that we resolved this way. Perhaps we can apply that solution to this problem." Yes, that may not strike anyone as an importantinnovation, but in some cases it can be a life-saver.

Consider kidney stones and gall stones. Today, we take an idea such as sound frequency matching, seen by many folks my age in old Memorex commercials where a recording of Ella Fitzgerald's voice shatters a wine glass, and apply it to shattering stones that form inside the human body.

Other types of innovation is subtle, a variation on an accepted way of doing things. In the history of the high jump, when you go back to the 40's and 50's, a person either did a barrel-roll or a scissor-kick to achieve the highest jump. One scissor-kick jumper started leading with his inside arm, leaning over with his torso first, then eventually going over the bar backwards in a fashion never before seen, and in doing something amazing - Dick Fosbury discovered a way to high jump that allowed his center of gravity to never go over the bar.

More later... but if anyone reads this, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the nature and source of the inspiration that leads to innovation