Workshop - Rob Wolcott on Innovation

Why is innovation so important? An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements (and) the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships.

Creative people are better at recognizing relationships, making associations and connections, and seeing things in an original way - seeing things that others cannot see. Having too many ideas can be dangerous. Part of what comes with seeing connections no one else sees is that not all of these connections actually exist. Innovations rarely come from “experts”. Jeff Bezos was not a bookseller, Elon Musk was not in the auto industry. When it comes to innovation, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. Most attempts at discovery fail, but a few succeed at such a scale that they more than makeup for everything else. Venture capital relies, for good and ill, on gut instinct and personality rather than spreadsheets and data.