Embracing Innovation

I'm almost 46 years old and am in the prime of my capacity to adapt to mental and physical change. I crave innovation just as I crave my weekend time climbing ice and scaling mountains. However, I know that my mental and physical capacity to embrace change are likely to diminish over time.

My Grandmother (passed away in the 1990's) spent her youth learning the Palmer method of perfect handwriting. When I learned to type in 6th grade and began typing all my correspondence, she could not embrace the notion that cursive handwriting was an anachronism.

As a college student, I had the privilege of living with Dr. Frederick Terman, former Provost of Stanford University and the person who brought Bill Hewlett/David Packard together in the 1930's. Dr. Terman was known for his foundational work in radio engineering, especially the creation of novel amplifier circuits. One night in the early 1980's, I brought Dr. Terman an integrated circuit that cost under $1 dollar and did the work of his most complex radio engineering designs in a single device smaller than a dime. I proudly explained that his foundational work made this integrated circuit possible. His response was that he could not understand the technology inside the device and thus he had no interest in it.

Recently, in her Nobel acceptance speech, Doris Lessing explained that the Internet is destroying creativity and intelligence because it enables anyone to be a publisher and it removes rigorous training in the history of literature as a barrier entry to authorship. Although I have the greatest respect for anyone who earns a Nobel prize, these statements reminded me of my conversation with Dr. Terman. Just because the new forms of social networking, blogging, wikis, and instant messaging are different than previous forms of scholarship does not mean they are inherently flawed. In the past, I would have not shared my experiences as CIO with everyone because the barriers to writing a book about it were too great. Now, anyone can benefit from my decade of successes and failures as a CIO for free, anytime, anywhere. In a sense, the internet has democratized access to knowledge.

My committment to my staff is that if I ever become the rate limiting step in adoption of new technologies, then it will be time for me to go. In the meantime, bring on the AJAX, the Continuous Data Replication, Host-based Intrusion Protection and all the new acronyms that cross my desk every day. I may not immediately understand every new technology, but I look forward to being a student, learning about the latest innovations, for life.