There are always problems in recognising breakthrough innovations at the initial idea stage.
Incremental innovations are a doddle to get by comparison. I’m sure there are no hard and fast rules. But generally real breakthrough ideas do make one feel uncomfortable. Sometimes even slightly cross.
The real question to ask is: is it really intriguing? Is there something about it that, although it feels unnerving, has one sensing that it just might change the game, be disruptive, break current rules, create a new way of being?
Sir Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare (wrongly believed by some to have written those amazing plays and poems), wrote: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in proportion.”
Worth bearing in mind when you’re confronted with tomorrow’s equivalent of the internet, the mobile phone, the airplane, the bicycle, the light bulb, the plough, the wheel…
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