a candle, unlit

I stopped writing for a moment and just thought about what my coach had told me: “how do you want the audience to feel?” I didn’t know. I was only just starting to come to terms with how I felt.

I felt angry.

On the post-it note in front of me was the idea I wanted to spread. I was invited to TEDx Omaha because they liked an idea. All three words of it. Innovation needs connection. One of those words made me angry, and, it wasn’t the one I thought it would be.

I have worked in innovation for 20 years. First as a scientist, then as a patent lawyer, and now as a bit of both. My interest in innovation was more than professional. As a student, I would often sacrifice the safe path to a good grade chasing down my own take on a subject. As a kid, I delighted in taking apart my Lego kits and building my own creation: usually jankier and less fun than the one on the box.  

Why then did ‘Innovation’ written in blocky, black sharpie, in my substitute teacher handwriting, make me angry? After all, I’d dedicated a career to innovation. I’d burned so much of my youth in late nights working in laboratories. I’d served inventors and scientists: protecting their inventions and strategizing partnerships to advance their intellectual property. I’d written grants, drafted patents, pitched investors, and seduced large corporations. I’d seen good ideas hatch, crawl, walk, stumble, and die.

I was angry because I’d seen too much.

Innovation was still the exciting new take that was more satisfying than the easy A, but it came freighted with the memory of that medical technology system. The invention never went anywhere after that dispute between the startup founders. Innovation may still convey my child-like pride of making a model kit my own, but it also came with the memory of the new statistical model that the insurance company backed out of funding. The new idea may still thrill me, but it also comes haunted by the innovations that didn’t make it: ghosts of inventions past that died too soon after that initial thrill of excitement.   

Innovation hadn’t changed, I had. I wanted the audience to feel that.

In that moment, and possibly for the first time in my life, I relaxed and trusted the process. My experience with TEDx Omaha has been a reflection on my professional career. Sitting at a stranger’s dining room table, drinking coffee from a rugby-themed coffee mug and staring at a pile of post-it notes: I promised myself. I’d take this seriously. I’d follow the rules

I’d set aside my impulse to improvise. I’d trust the process. 

That commitment was soon rewarded. By setting aside my discomfort for such a brainstorming session, I received a real gem of a revelation. For years, I’d been carrying this shard of anger. Calling it by name, physically holding it’s post-it note avatar in my hand, I was astonished at how much it had colored my opinion of my professional life. It was the gift of a new perspective – and left me wondering what else I would discover.