Good Ideas: Inconveniences

You know it's serious business when you're using both hands.

Good ideas often come from inconveniences, especially inconveniences that we have accepted as necessary in society. And when I teach about innovation, the first example I always talk about is the telephone.

The early phones required two handed operation, and while that may look a little odd in today's world it is only because we have gotten used to telephones which have a joined speaker and microphone. Later on, someone would eventually figure out that the distance between the ear and the mouth doesn't vary all that much for most people and the two pieces would then be joined.

Sure, this seems obvious to us now, but people used the candlestick telephone for decades. There are numerous similar examples of this, but it is important for us to realize that "back in the day", everyone thought they were really advanced and high-tech just as much as we currently do. Let us never lose sight of the humble nature of our human beginnings and let's try to be innovative by taking a deeper look into the things in our lives which we have unconsciously accepted.