There is a very important aspect of innovation that has to do with humility. What kind of humility? The humility of an honest not-knowing.
How can there be real breakthrough innovation from a position of knowing—of holding knowledge, of being able to explain things before the innovation has changed everything that was known? It cannot. It’s easy to see. Yet the temptation of so-called innovators is to hold knowledge as the ground for innovation, as a base for what they consider creative thinking. But thinking itself is made of the atoms of knowledge: memory and rationality.
Real innovation—real breakthrough, the emergence of the new that is totally original and totally surprising—is not yet tested upon any base, any ground of knowledge, application, and so on. The ground must be full of air. And that air, that space, is the space of not-knowing.
When an innovator—a real innovator—could be a totally ignorant innovator, but still meets the field of infinite possibility with vigor and immersion in the new, when that happens on the ground of not-knowing, the word humility signals the quality being pointed to here.
Now, in the world we live in, and given that AI has attracted immense resources into the field of what’s called practical innovation, one may ask whether the two geographical centers of innovation—and I’m focusing on the US and China—are distinguished by the quality of humility in innovation. Maybe they are; maybe they are not. I’m just putting it there for you to look at and question, because innovation from humility will always go infinitely farther and toward a truly innovative scale.
“Innovative scale” means the context of innovation will not be limited to the context of an invitation to innovate; it will open doors beyond. So, wherever you are and whatever you innovate, do give space. Do give room. Do consider welcoming into the field of innovation the quality of humility, which is the appreciation of not-knowing as a base for the movement of the new—the emergence of the new.
