Without variety innovation cannot take root.
Innovation has many, if you will, fertilizers. Money helps. Spare time helps. An environment receptive to change is, of course, essential. But variety is the seed from which innovation sprouts.
Variety can come from many sources:
- Place
- Culture
- Perspective
- Time
- Experience
- Training
- Language
- Process
- Expectation
Change any of the above and you have the opportunity for innovation. Mental alertness rises and the ideas for further change and (hopefully) improvement can be expected.
For example, simply having more than one place to work helps with concentration. Research has shown that, contrary to the popular conception that having a fixed place to work is good for intellectual productivity, students learn better if they switch it up a bit and study in different places. It helps, for example, if they sometimes study in their rooms, sometimes in the library, and sometimes in the kitchen. The same applies to study times. The increased focus (or the reduction of boredom) helps the students absorb their chemistry, language, music, and English literature lessons better. (See the research of Dr. Robert Bjork of UCLA.)
The same applies to innovation. Changing the work place, the work schedule, the content of the work itself, or any of the other variables listed above is a valuable stimulus to interest levels and will result in the introduction of fresh ideas. Sometimes the “fresh ideas” are simply transfers of a practice that was picked up in a different context. Sometimes the “fresh ideas” are true “ah ha!” moments in which the worker, with his mental alertness stimulated by the different context or content, has a breakthrough and comes up with a truly new and unique approach to a task or a problem.
Either way, innovation has sprouted and with a little encouragement can become part of the routine.