Imagine we're all cooking a meal together. We're in three groups: the trailblazers, the chefs, and the hosts. The trailblazers find a location for the meal and find all the crazy ingredients for it. The chefs plan and prepare the meal, perfecting each dish. The hosts create the seating arrangement, light the candles, and prepare the atmosphere. Working together as a team, the experience soon becomes a breathtaking memory.
Innovation looks and feels different for all of us, then. For the trailblazers, it's focusing on finding new spaces, places, and ingredients. For the chefs, it's focusing on creating new recipes, combination, and flavors. For the hosts, it's focusing on arranging the candles, the tablecloth, or the flatware.
Simply because some innovations are more visible or more colorful than others does not make the others cease to exist.
Whether we're dreaming up an invention, creating the prototype, or building the finished product, we can be brilliant innovators. It does not matter where in the value chain we are sitting - every link of the chain can be strengthened.
Let's remember that not all innovation looks the same and that we should celebrate every brand of it.
Here's to the Innovators. Here's to us all.