“By our definition, creativity only becomes innovation when ideas become useful. In the business world, that means when a new product or service is launched, or starts to make money. Creativity is a behaviour; innovation is a process.”
– Dave Allan et al, Sticky Wisdom
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“I mean, one thing that I did from early on because of the nature of my relationship with equipment, was my loyalty was to the best thing. So I wouldn’t, just because my dad was making me a board, if somebody else comes along with a better board, that’s what I’m riding.
The equipment would never be a limitation. Never right? I’m not going to be compromised because of my loyalty to a brand or loyalty to my dad, because that’s the tool. Yeah. So if the tool can allow you to do a better job, yeah. Or do it the way you need to do it or want to do it. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, it was better. It was better. And so, I think that allowed me to kind of bounce along, too.
But whoever made the best one, this is the tool that I use to do this thing that I do. And I’m sorry, I’m using whatever I get.”
– Laird Hamilton, Tetragrammaton Podcast, 10th April 2024
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What is the process of improvement?
We can have an ideal, imagine the best way of doing something. That is exciting- to run the movie in our minds of who we wish to be.
We have two hands. What are we doing with them today? What tools are we currently using?
The best ideas are the ones in action. Not chin scratching theories. It’s easy to be an armchair expert. What happens when we raise ourselves up from the comfort of theory into the uncertainty of practice is what counts.
The only way to know what works is to try. And inevitably most of what we try will not be perfect. But we always have the option of putting down the tool that doesn’t work and picking up another to see if that does the job.
This is a lifetime process. What I don’t want to be heard to say is that I have all the answers and nothing I do needs improving.
Loyalty to myself is not attachment to how I’ve done things in the past, it’s a commitment to self improvement and the simple maxim: to keep moving forward as an eternal student.
I am always on the lookout for better ways of doing, and because we are what we do, it’s the constant search for a better way of being.
Conversations With Quotations 