There are a number of ways to motivate
people towards innovation. From other posts on this blog you can
certainly deduce that I am very much in favour of methods which
involve providing or deriving some form of mission, principle or “meaning”.
Here is an excellent video (about one
hour in length) by Bret Victor describing his motivation to be innovative by discribing it as “Inventing on principle”.
His video basically runs through two
parts. Firstly demonstrating some escellent examples of how to give
designers immediate feedback on what they are creating rather than
expecting them to simulate the results of their actions in their
heads (In my mind these ideas will definitely shape the field of
programming in the years to come).
Secondly he discusses aspects
of being an technologist activist inventing for a principle. As
social activists fight some social or moral “wrong” through
organizing and influencing, technologyst activists fight some
“difficiency” in the world by formulating and inventing solutions to it.
