Graduates of 2020: Everyone is an Inventor
With graduation week upon us, I have been thinking about what is next for the young adults like my son, who face an obstacle to traditional employment they never planned for: a pandemic. The vision of a traditional transition from University life to work is gone and while we likely could not have planned for this scenario, we could do a better job of teaching them an important lesson about the myriad of other ways to make a living.
For example, over the years I have tried to inspire out of the box career thinking in my children by comparing a traditional salary with the development of a product (defined in this case as an idea, item, invention, solution, or creative work). I say:
"You can make $100,000 in salary OR you can make a $100 product and sell it to 1,000 people or a $1 product and sell it to 100,000 people, or a 10,000 product and sell it to 10 people. What would you rather do?"
They usually ponder it for a bit, but then come back to the idea of a traditional career. I didn't understand why until one of my mentors recently said to me:
"Every single thing around you, large and small, was invented by someone of your same species."
This was during a conversation we were having about his propensity to churn out idea after idea, validating them quickly, and then breathing them - sometimes imperfectly- to life. He does not wait for the design to be perfect or mounds of market research: he sees a need, inspiration strikes and a new product or service is born.
I recently re-read a series of posts by Tim Ferriss where he featured inventor and license deal master Stephen Key which echoed this advice, and made it seem super simple, just like my advice to my kids. So why then, are we not all churning out inventions? Is invention a part of the imagination we once had as children, lost as we grow up and into the world around us?
I don't think so. I think that very few people take the ability to invent as an entitlement. People like my mentor and Stephen Key see invention as something they are inherently deserving of, empowered, and even compelled to do!
In fact, most people assume the opposite. They think inventors are especially creative or have specialized knowledge or something else that they simply don't. This is simply false: we all have the power to ideate and invent we just need to regularly exercise our right to do so. Not every invention will be successful or world changing, but for some people the simple act of creating could at least be game-changing in how they enter the workforce.
Graduates of 2020: don't wait for the world to give you what you have earned: take what is yours as a birthright. We are all creators and now, more than ever, we need your good work in the world!