Innovation and evolution are necessary for survival
Humans are incredibly adaptive. It is in our DNA to adapt and evolve. As a species, early on we adapted to survive in the wild against predators and the elements with no modern technology. Given, people did not regularly live to be 70 years old thousands of years ago, like we do now, but we adapted to survive as a species! Certainly, this survival was driven by innovation and a constant desire to live better and easier every day.
I am certain there was at some point in history a caveman out hunting that came across a large stick which had fallen from a tree. A random thought must have crossed his mind, “If I hit a rabbit with this stick instead of trying to catch it with my bare hands, I might have better luck killing one today.” At this point, he picked up the stick and went off to find a rabbit to sneak up on and whack over the head. After sneaking around the woods for hours, he finally found one! He then proceeded to get as close to the rabbit as possible without spooking it. Once he was close enough, he raised the stick over his head to smack the small animal with his newfound blunt object, but the stick probably broke on impact, failing to kill his dinner. In his frustration and disappointment, he likely set off to find a stronger stick that could survive the impact of striking with great force. The next time it was a success! He brought home his dinner beaming with pride. I can imagine he got back to his village with his chest out and head high, ready to show off his kill to his family.
This success went on for weeks or months. And then one day he arrived at this village and saw his neighbor with a freshly killed small pig. Wondering how his neighbor killed a larger animal like a pig with only a large blunt stick, he likely went next door to check it out. While inspecting the kill, he may have noticed the neighbor’s weapon of choice laying on the ground. If our ancient ancestors were anything like modern man, his neighbor was more than willing to show off his new weapon! The neighbor likely picked up his newly developed long, light, and straight stick. This stick was unlike any stick our caveman had seen before. It was not blunt on the end like his. This new stick was pointed on the end! It was able to puncture the skin of an animal to kill rather than smash its head! This was cool! Our caveman had to have one for himself.
Trial and error are integral to the innovation process
This likely led our caveman to head straight to the woods in search of a new stick that was straight and long like his neighbor’s. He most likely spent many hours trying to figure out how to make the end sharper and more of a point than his neighbor’s. His competitive drive to be the best hunter in the village led to many iterations of the new pointy stick. With each iteration he was able to become faster, quieter, and more efficient at killing than anyone around him. However, due to this drive to innovate and improve the way he gathered, sharpened, and deployed his sticks, there was bound to be many setbacks along the way. Attempts were made to find longer sticks, but not so long they were hard to carry. He searched for lighter sticks, but not so light they broke easily. Efforts were made to create sharper sticks, but not too sharp because the tip would break off on impact. All these experiments and setbacks were at the root of innovation for our caveman.
As our caveman friend became more and more proficient at making long, light, sharp sticks, I am sure his neighbors came over to check out his amazing hunting tools with envy. At some point one of these neighbors driven to innovate and have an even more effective weapon developed a better point; one made of rock. It was stronger, sharper, and more consistent. It, however, took more time to craft and perfect. It was harder to source, because there were only certain rocks that made great points. It was only through experimentation and trial and error that these innovations in weapon making were able to advance through time. This innovation led these caveman ancestors of ours to gain the ability to hunt and kill larger and larger game. This allowed them to provide more food with a single kill. More meat in one kill allowed them more time to develop better weapons.
Developing straighter, sharper, and stronger sticks was only part of the innovation process. They had to learn more effective ways to hurl these sticks toward animals. Soon the atlatl was experimented with and developed through trial and error. At one point in history, it was the pinnacle of technology! All the best caveman hunters had the latest and greatest in atlatl technology. Constant striving for stronger, faster, and more efficient are at the core of our DNA! Everything in our bodies evolved over time to help us survive more efficiently. Those that didn’t innovate likely didn’t survive.
Error doesn't have to mean disaster
Having innovation encoded in every cell of our bodies has brought us a long way! Innovation in our DNA is what allowed the ancient Egyptians to dream up and build the pyramids and the great sphinx. It is what allowed the ancient Chinese to build a stone wall that can be seen from space. Our DNA allowed humans to build the Taj Mahal! Ultimately, this encoding has led us as a species to imagine, build and grow a network of communication that spans the entire planet. This communication network allows us to talk to a video feed of another person on the complete opposite side of the earth, IN REAL TIME! Human innovation is remarkable. It seems like it is an amazing gift without flaw. However, there is a downside to this encoded innovation; it does come with a cost. That cost is error and mistakes. Error is all around us and part of what we do every day. Error is a by-product of innovation and efficiency.
There is a commonly held understanding that humans make anywhere between three and five errors an hour. This is assuming the human we are talking about is not completing an overly complex task or an overly mundane task. Three to five errors an hour is significant! Think about that for a minute. Split that down the middle and say we average four errors an hour. If you get out of bed at 6:00 am and get to bed at 9:00pm you are awake for 15 hours. That is 60 errors in a day, 1,800 errors a month and 21,600 errors in a single year. To put this in greater perspective, if you live to the current global average age of a man, you will make 1,524,960 errors in your lifetime. If you are a woman, since you will on average live longer, you will make 1,622,160 errors in your lifetime. Now these numbers assume men and women have the same error rate, which is highly unlikely since men tend to participate in higher risk behaviors and purposely put themselves in error likely situations more often than women (based solely on personal experience.) 1.5 million errors in one’s lifetime is a lot!
With 1.5 million errors in one’s lifetime, it’s a wonder we survive at all! It’s a wonder we get anything done. It is truly amazing that we can do the complex things humans do these days. You see, error is not always detrimental or catastrophic. Sometimes errors leave us with an outcome that we never thought possible. Just look at the products we use every day that were discovered through error. Penicillin, Post-it Notes, Scotch Guard, the microwave, X-Rays, etc., are everyday use items that have, in some situations, literally changed the way we live. This is the upside to error and mistakes. If there had not been people willing to try new ideas and risk making mistakes and errors, there would not be a world full of inventions and innovations. Where there is error, there is likely innovation close by. You cannot have one without the other.
How to work with error and keep innovating
Since innovation changes how efficient we are as a people, our desire should never be to eliminate error. We should rather be looking to harness error and put guardrails around it and the error likely situations we face. You see, if we accept humans make mistakes and errors, we can then understand when and where they are most likely to happen. This is the vein of gold we should be digging around for. We should be seeking to understand where error and innovation happen. When we understand where, we can then understand how to protect against serious consequences of error. Once we have built defenses against the consequences of error, we can then proceed to innovate in relative safety.
The major killer of innovation is fear, fear of failure and fear of making mistakes. Most of the time, people, especially in the workplace, get reprimanded for making mistakes and errors. If we live and work in a world striving to be mistake free, we live and work in a world that stops growing, learning, and improving. If we stop innovating, we stop improving, and we prevent people from doing great work. To keep from stifling innovation, we must understand that error and mistakes are normal. If humans had stopped innovating out of fear of failure and errors, our caveman friend might still be running around the woods trying to catch rabbits with his bare hands. That life is tiring and has little room for margin. Innovation and its byproduct, error, brought us into the modern age. We must embrace both if we are going to move into the next age of humanity and innovation!
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