A lot of my daily life, communication, pitches and reading right now is about innovation.

It is easy to get carried away, riding the way of Steve Jobs heritage to …”Change the world!” In a sense it can be tiring. Everyone can’t be innovative. Some people simply must do. Or?

Another aspect of innovation (besides facing macrotrends along collapsing financial systems, drug war, climate .. etc.) is that we must innovate, constantly, simply because we can, on a microlevel. Like the mountaineer George Mallory that climbed the mountain “because it’s there” – it was in his nature, close to his passion or his capabilities.

Humans have a great advantage in sharing knowledge and making new conclusions across borders and generations – an ability and advantage that we have inherited from great grand parents Cro Magnon. (This knowledge sharing capability was likey one reason driving Neanderthals to extinction).

So, we should innovate, because we can, if nothing else, to avoid complacency and boredom or retreat to caveman mentality, to find ways matching our individual capability to a relevant challenge, remain in a flow state, be happy, in an increasingly crowded world, where the quest for identity is accelerating, to also avoid being crazy, but self confident and proud.

If we lack self insight and/or have the wrong self perception we will feel inclined to be successful in the wrong area, matching current capability with wrong challenge leading to either stress or depression. (Ref. “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi).

Bottom line, my view: we should innovate, constantly, not only repeat the same old same old, but also “combat” daily microtrends, not only to sell next block buster or become the next Black Swan, because we can, it defines us as humans, for the same reason we play mind challenging games.

Key to succeed – feel good, is to fail and learn from failure, to be realistic short term about oneself, to challenge status quo … also on a microlevel. How do we teach and build skills to leverage that capability on a micro level (and not only to create shareholder value), problem solving techniques leading to innovation capabilities?

Ask yourself as a daily checklist:

1. What did I learn/share today?
2. What did I improve today?

To paraphase “Bröderna Mozart”, great Swedish movie: “I am just a Mensch Walter, a human being being human”

Are you? How?