The term “innovation” is everywhere.  But, what does it really mean?  If everyone’s innovating – is it innovative?  Does it mean the same thing to all people?  Is one man’s innovation another man’s curse?  And how does society, the marketplace or the scientific community determine the value of an innovation – is a truly innovative “thing” or process decided on a ‘yes or no’ basis or on some type of relative value scale? Enough with the questions – innovators are all about finding answers! 

 

Whether in the laboratory or on the assembly line, innovation begins with an idea.  Ideas may rarely arrive as a “bolt from the blue,” but most durable ideas leading to meaningful innovation are born of investigation, experience or both.  Many things must occur for a potentially good idea to matriculate into an accomplished innovation.  Space does not permit me to catalogue this idea journey, nor the hurdles that ideas (including new intellectual properties and government patents) must traverse.  However, it is sufficient to say that innovation does not reach the wider public by accident.  It is a difficult birth, this birth of a new idea. 

 

Of note, especially in the world of science, the capacity to achieve and maintain claims to an innovation is itself a competition.  Some have said that there are no really new ideas, just old ideas repackaged.  With the scientific tools of innovation being nearly ubiquitous, with numerous discovery teams pursuing similar research “holy grails” and with industry driving research and development as the key to newly profitable products, the innovation machine is in constant hyperdrive – with innovations spinning off the cogs like sparks, each with a different brilliance and half-life. 

 

Can we at a research university teach innovation?  Or, is it our charge to create the environment that is most conducive to innovative thinking – a crucible wherein the sparks can be seen when they are generated, and judged by the faculty as to their luminescence?  We believe enough in the concept of a university as an incubator to have a designated facility for public-private innovation, and to foster the widespread access to scientific core infrastructure by researchers. 

 

But, is it enough to innovate – to get us individually or collectively to the “place where the puck isn’t?”  And when we reach that spot on the ice coveted by Wayne Gretsky,  “What’s Next?”  If everyone is standing on that sweet spot, who will pass the puck to the star innovator? 

 

So, while it’s easy to have ideas, it’s not easy to innovate.  It takes awareness, discipline and, yes, a little luck, to navigate the innovation journey.  And without the innovator’s mindset, which can be taught, what is a scientist to think?  The day-to-day piece work of good science can, in the right environment, give birth to innovations not imagined.  MCG is that environment, and innovation is our learning goal.

 

Sincerely,
D. Douglas Miller, M.D., C.M.
Dean, MCG School of Medicine