Mother America and the “New” Spirit of Innovation

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
- Emma Lazarus, "New Colossus,"

Go west young lad! Innovation has long meant expansion, exploration, and propagation. Industrial states have moved themselves forward through production and propaganda, building and broadcasting the creative decisions of a small table at the top of a tall tower. In this spirit of innovation, creativity and innovation were additive and exclusive. You built off of the work of those who came before in the steady march of industrial control over the elements. Innovation was a controlled mastery of man over nature, yet the promise of manifest destiny wears thin.

Increasingly innovation is defined in terms of collaboration. Those who sit at the top of the old towers were the big ideas had come from are increasingly finding that they cannot predict where the next one will spring up. They fear this loss of control that comes with having to create innovation through emergence and inclusion. The spirit is shifting towards a set of softer skills: listening, compassion, empathy, connection. This shift comes from an acknowledgement that neither one of us has all of the answers but that we exist as a community that builds itself together.

As the old spirit of innovation weakens it entrenches. Bureaucracies thicken and spasm in response to a loss of control and a fear of subjects that grow ever more mobile along its the peripheries. Innovation is gathering in the mountains where the states don’t know the local terrain, where roads are narrower, and communities are personal. A masculine call to go west has been replaced by a feminine impulse to create home together on the “new” frontier. Happy mothers day!