Innovation Starts With a Single Line

My first job was at a small medical startup company called Medingo. I was hired to do a small project and build an executive presentation. I was sitting next to the team of engineers who drafted the company’s patent applications. Watching me manipulating Powerpoint and Adobe illustrator, they asked me if I could help out with some of the technical patent drawings.

I became a Patent Engineer at the company and was in charge of developing and building the patent flows along with the team. During my work I collaborated with engineers, product professionals, marketing experts and together came out with ideas for the company’s patent inventions. By the time the company was acquired by Roche we had over 100 patent families in our portfolio.

This experience taught me that innovation starts with a single line. The line evolves into a drawing. This drawing is the result of three key factors: Imagination, visualization and collaboration. The ability to draw the first line on a blank piece of paper is the start of any big idea or company. Sometimes people are so afraid this blank page or don’t know what to draw, what might prevent the birth of great inventions.

My vision is that we can all solve any problem. All we need to do is to draw that first line of our solution, and then build on that. We need to overcome the fear that we cannot draw, or what will happen if we fail to draw it well. My biggest challenge is to help people draw this first line and help them grow. This line could be the start of something big that could change the world.

Ready to draw your line?

Feel free to add your thoughts and stories of how you drive innovation in the comments. Would love to hear from you Illai (https://il.linkedin.com/in/illaigescheit)