Inventiveness, investment and innovation

We humans have progressed from inventing the wheel, discovering fire, to becoming able to land on the Moon and reach other planets like Mars. We are now able to calculate the distance of planets from each other or at least estimate the rough distance of planets and celestial objects in space, which were just a dream in the time of the early man, perhaps the early men hadn’t even thought of it.

Everything discussed above, was possible because of innovation. Innovation is the lifeline of humanity. Humans’ inventiveness creates huge developments in the human world. This is the reason Human Resources are the prime importance to humanity, because Human Resources know how to use the Natural resources available for us and also invent new things which are never seen before.

At the time of the early man, everything in the human world was simple, and basically, entirely wild. From being hunter-gatherers, to living together in civilisations and slowly transforming into village-dwellers, to an urban sophisticated lifestyle. The progress curve has surely been steeper than ever before for the lives of humans. Although our sophisticated urban living styles are making the environment face a lot of problems but still progress is being made even in that field of protecting and preserving the environment. But how was all this progress possible?

This progress was possible because of innovation. Innovation basically is improvement in the style of doing something that helps us to improve the quality of the output, and also make the task a much simpler task to accomplish. For example, people a few decades ago had to search library-by-library, to look for some important point they needed to clarify their doubt. Today however, the situations have changed. Now, we can just use the internet to know what we want to know, we are always just a few clicks away from the answers of our questions on the internet. So we have progressed from searching in the library to just looking and searching on the internet, and getting to our results in just a few seconds. This is what innovation is all about.

Like I said before, in the prehistoric times, everything discovered at that time was so very simple and accomplishable at a personal level. Today however, we have accomplished so many higher steps of success, but these successes aren’t accomplishable entirely at a personal level. As an illustration we can take the following analogy: if you needed food in the prehistoric times, you just had to gather food like fruits and vegetables from the forests or hunt for the food. A very straightforward answer to the question, “Where do I get food from?” in the prehistoric time. Today however to get food, we humans have to go through an entire society system. The same question, “Where do I get food from?” has a different and more complicated answer today. Work, earn money, purchase what you want to eat, and then finally it is possible to eat. And each of these points—work, earning money, buying and selling; all are independent and important points of study in the present time. And one needs to have knowledge of all of these points at a certain level to comfortably live in this world.

The results of both time frames however, are vastly different. Because there is competition, and struggle to succeed in the present time, the reward is also not small. To get a simple job, one has to become the best he/she can be to prove himself worthy of the privileges he/she is going to be provided with. The prehistoric time was different, the output was immediate, and if you were successful, that success wouldn’t last for a long time in the prehistoric era.

Innovation today, in my opinion, has 3 steps—invention, investment, and then finally innovation.

Innovation starts with invention, or the discovery of something new and never seen before, which would help the society in a certain field(s). Invention is an investment in of it itself, not financial but mental, logical, and fundamental. While inventing something, the inventor has to go through a lot of struggle, spend his valuable time in the research of that subject matter. Even though that research would seem useless at first to the other people around, but the inventor knows that the research that he is doing is because of something valuable that he is finding for the benefit of the society. If the inventor does not lose focus and succeeds in the invention, then the people around him actually understand the importance of the invention that has been created. Fortunately, the number of people counting research as unimportant and useless, is decreasing and people slowly are understanding the importance and the value of research. This is a good sign and people will eventually know that research is not just something time waste.

Next comes investment. Not just manufacturing the product is important, but making people aware of the invented product is also important. And turning an invention to a life-changing instrument, for the users, the inventor/creator, and the investor, investment is important. Imagine some product has been invented that is very innovative, new and helpful for the society, which has the potential to make place in the people’s lives, their minds and their hearts. Entrepreneurs like to hover their minds over these kinds of products, because of the people’s attention. Because if people are attentive towards a product like such, and if someone has the control over that product, then virtually there is huge scales of profit for the seller. And so, realising the profit, the entrepreneurs invest in the product or purchase the product’s patent and start manufacturing it in their company and start mass-selling their product to their customers. The investments or the purchase of the entrepreneurs makes the inventor of the product, completely independent for the rest of his life and he never has to worry about earning money ever in his life because of his invention. A great example is the worldwide used chatting app WhatsApp. WhatsApp was founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009. Facebook purchased WhatsApp at the cost of $19 billion in 2014. This turned Both Brian Acton and Jan Koum into independent entrepreneurs and also made them financially free for the rest of their life. Now, Facebook is the owner of WhatsApp, and now all the profit that WhatsApp makes is Facebook’s. In this way, the customers or the users of WhatsApp, the founders or the inventors of WhatsApp, and Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg) all three are satisfied and happy with the product.

Now comes Innovation. Innovation is the final idea that is used by the people, and will continue, until something better than that is created in that very field. Innovation is something that changes the lives of the people. So, if you think you have the potential to do something that will aid you in the present, then become innovative and follow the mantra of innovation, investment, and innovation to become what you want yourself to become.