DESIGN|MARKETING|TECHNOLOGY by Sarmistha Tarafder

The Battle for Innovation: How Do You Win It?

4/22/2011

Create like Van Gogh, live like Michelangelo.
Corning is one such company that has a track record of over 150 years of innovation. It goes way back to the days of Thomas Edison: from manufacturing of light bulbs to color tubes, to LCD screens to the Pyrex glass technology and much more. No other house of glass affects our daily living as does Corning. The Reason: Innovation

How does a company keeps winning the battle for innovation for 150 years?
Frans Johansson, author of Medici Effect, asked this question to Lina Echeverria, who heads the glass research group at Corning. "I want the researchers [at Corning] to have the creativity of Van Gogh but lead the life of Michelangelo." She tells them to follow their hearts. This is where passion comes from and passion is the house for creativity. Believe it or not, there is a "creativity room" at Corning where researchers can talk about whatever is on their mind to encourage cross fertilization of ideas. This is the field of INTERSECTION. Innovation happens here. Ideas that were always seen as completely apart, merges to form this extraordinary new phenomena. Eric Lewis is one such innovator who lives and breathes at the INTERSECTION. He created a new musical identity: ELEW......it is rock, it is jazz, it is classical piano.
Experience innovation as it happens.

Now, that you have watched innovation in real time what does it mean to have the creativity of Van Gogh but lead the life of Michelangelo. Vincent Van Gogh was a starving painter of his times. He sold only one painting in 1890, the year he took his life. Yet he laid the foundations of modern art. He did not paint what he saw as reality. He created his own reality. It is an inter-dimensional concept.
When Vincent van Gogh was asked, "Your trees always go beyond the stars...?" he said, "Yes, because I understand trees. I have felt always that trees are the ambition of the earth to reach the stars. Otherwise why? To touch the stars, to feel the stars, to go beyond the stars – this is the desire of the earth. The earth tries hard, but cannot fulfill the desire. I can do it. The earth will understand my paintings, and I don't care about you, whether you understand or not."
"The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech." This is what it means to create from the seat of passion. It is the rhythm of the heart.

Michelangelo breathed life into stone. He was the master magician. Yet, he was painting for the church. His famous painting is God creating the world, very much in sync with the signs of the time. Michelangelo, was skilled, disciplined and had good business acumen. Michelangelo was the man living in the world, creating and helping others. Van Gogh was not of the world – he created for the sake of creation. "I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life - the power to create." Vincent Van Gogh

Whatever you do to live in this world, live it but always DREAM. Dreams are the paintings of your passion. You will know it. It is not of this world. Give life to that which is out of the world, innovation is bound to follow.