Innovation – For Tourists or Travelers?

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

G. K. Chesterton

The traveler strikes the right balance between the wanderer’s open-minded absence of direction, and the tourist single-minded destination focus.

Like the tourist, the traveler knows the value of setting a direction and charting a course. Like the wanderer, the traveler knows the value of observing the way of life, the attitudes, the passing light in the landscape, the unexpected, the transient, which will never find their place on the shelf of the airport bookshop.

Like the traveler, the innovator knows the challenge and sets a course to address it, then keeps the flexibility to discover along the way the people, ingredients and tools that will eventually enable her to meet the challenge.

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Yann Cramer is an innovation learner, practitioner, sharer, teacher. He’s lived in France, Belgium and the UK, he’s travelled six continents to create development opportunities with customers or suppliers, and run workshops on R&D and Marketing. He writes on www.innovToday.com and on twitter @innovToday.