The ability to be an innovator, create a culture of innovation, or champion of journey toward the new and different is a unique skill and competency. Sorely, it is a competency that is lacking in our community today. The absence of innovators and visionaries can be sensed as the final NASA space shuttle mission is orbiting the Earth.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
The vision of President John F. Kennedy on 12 September 1962, at Rice University, Houston, Texas propelled the nation into space. President Kennedy envisioned a goal and brought together innovators from around the nation to make it happen. Launching the United States actively into the space race was part vision, part realist, and part innovator. It was a defining moment for Baby Boomers and this nation – a moment to serve a national driving force for nearly eight decades.
I was not old enough to understand the real meaning of these words; but, they influenced my life. As a child, every space flight was a family event. Models of the solar system were dominant in my playroom. Posters of Mercury and Apollo missions filled the bulletin board. There was a warm summer evening spent in our family room watching Walter Cronkite anchor man landing, walking, and broadcasting on the moon. From Gus Grissom to the Challenger crew, I wept when the nation wept at the loss of an astronaut. The ability to travel through space and connect with life “out there” quickly shifted from the extraordinary to the mundane in a few short years.
President Kennedy understood this nation’s need to foster its future leaders. In strategic planning terms, your mission is compounded by a vision. This vision is formed by creating a BHAG – Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal. Reaching the moon was a BHAG for its time.
I believe in being an innovator.
Walt Disney said – and lived this concept. President Kennedy set the challenge; Disney created the world. The initial incarnation of Tomorrow Land included people movers, traveling and living in the stars, and a future world implementing the technology of dreamers for the reality of its citizens. Tomorrow Land, and then EPCOT – originally identified as the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, was the realization of space technology in our lives.
Walking through Tomorrow Land, Disneyland, Disney World, Epcot enabled you to use all your senses and be an innovator. Disney instilled a sense of wonder, imagination, visioning to build a cadre of innovators. Imagination coupled with fearlessness fostered Disney cast members to dream the dream, then make it a reality.
It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward.
Not Gene Roddenberry’s most famous quote, although reflective of his underlying belief that space was the final frontier. Roddenberry’s universe was populated by cell phones, computer discs, laptops, Ipads. Molecules were broken apart, transported across space, and put together again. Travel to the moon was a day trip; travel faster than the speed of light transported us to be part of “new life and new civilizations.”
Thanks to my wife, we had the opportunity to spend dinner and evening with Lenard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) a few years ago. I asked him which came first –the technology of Star Trek or the technology of our real world. He said the world of Star Trek was created by Roddenberry. Roddenberry and the writers imagined communicators and discs for personal computers before they were real. He shared that often NASA representatives would be on the set. Innovators teaching innovators. The children accepting Kennedy’s challenge and living in the world of Walt Disney were now taking the next giant leap and innovating a new world for themselves and generations to come.
Star Trek in my world wasn’t science fiction. It was science fact. Here is a child who grew up watching John Glenn circle the Earth and Armstrong walk on the moon. Here is a child who grew up with a guy down the street from me in Indianapolis, Dr. David Wolf, take several trips to the International Space Station. Today, here is an adult believing innovation will take us beyond the stars.
My son was in high school and shared a car with his brother. Neither of the kids were into cars; but for several days he was working in the garage installing one of our old computers in the trunk. Wires ran from the trunk to the dashboard. There was a key pad at the dashboard controlling the computer. The computer contained all his favorite music. The father in me was agast that he had a working computer int he trunk and fearful it would create an accident. My son had created his own Walkman and Ipod. Afterward, we st down and watched Star Trek: The Next Generation together.
Every generation has its innovators. The lives of Kennedy, Disney, Roddenberry did not coincidentally overlap. Each in their own way changed the environment and our perspective of reality. Theirdreams challenged a generation to dream, imagine, innovate. Today, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have revolutionized how we act, think, and live. But, today, the disparity among populations is greater then it has been since the ancient caste systems. Who are the dreamers and innovators that will challenge a child in 2011 to think beyond the confines of their minds? Our era of status quo, alignment, getting by, and fear derails an innovative spirt. Those who think far beyond the box, in this era, are outliers instead of heroes.
My children will have the opportunity to travel in space much as we do in planes today. My grandchildren may come home to visit Earth from a distant world. My grandchildren and great grandchildren will look at cell phones that take 3-D movies as ancient technology. The space shuttle era may be ending causing thousands of Kennedy’s protegies at NASA to explore the reaches of unemployment; the absence of money will not kill the innovative spark in everyone.
Space is the final frontier and when you wish upon a star; all your dreams really do come true.
Leave a Reply