Most people think that innovation is always free flowing and if you force the process you destroy creativity. In other words if you stress out over performance and deadlines you cannot remain creative. I completely disagree in that they also say that necessity is the Mother of Invention.

Few would disagree with that very profound statement which keeps getting repeated from politicians to academia; now there is something they can agree on? Now then consider a hardship, catastrophe or war. If you fail to innovate, overcome or adapt you could die; hence the other saying; Adapt or Die.

Indeed, now then consider in World War II, which was one of the fastest innovation periods of mankinds 10,000 years of recorded history. Or think of the cold war as a motivator, with deadlines and sense of urgency to literally move mountains, did that slow innovation? No, we put a man on the Moon; yes a giant step for mankind no doubt.

Now then this brings me to my next point and that is it is okay to have innovative goals; in fact it works really well. I can prove it in that I have a personal goal of two-original thoughts each day. Generally I consider these to thoughts to most often be inventions or technology type things, but occasionally other things; social, political or even economic.

To have 2-original thoughts per day you cannot limit your topics or subject matter as you will run out of things to think of and thus not achieve the goal. I would recommend that everyone set innovation goals; start with one original idea per quarter or every 3-months at first. That is what I had to do, then work up to it. Try it and tap into your own personal creative and innovative mind for original ideas. Consider all this in 2006.