Inventing on principle

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.

This is absolutely not the only way to drive innovation, but can definitely be one of the most powerful.

More of Bret's work here.  The javascript library he used here