For years, I thought innovation needed champions: expert champions. My job was to find them. Every email had to be perfectly crafted. Every pitch deck meticulously designed. Every presentation rehearsed until I could deliver it flawlessly. I imagined that some sage expert, upon seeing our university’s inventions presented with such precision, would recognize their brilliance and clear the path forward.
I’d seen the incredible potential waiting in university labs. Revolutionary diagnostic tests that could detect diseases earlier and more accurately than ever before. Brilliant physicians who had designed elegant new surgical tools, drawing from their daily experience in the operating room. Each invention represented years of careful research and development. It was my solemn privilege to spread the word, and I approached as a shameless carnival barker.
“Step right up and see the marvel of nano formulations made from formulary polymers; surgical robots driven by next-generation AI; diagnostic tests capable of predicting presymptomatic disease.”
The silence was deafening.
So I hung up my straw hat at striped suspenders. If those distant experts were going to appreciate what I saw in university labs then barking wasn’t going to do it. I was going to have to make something those sage experts would want to come looking for.
When I stepped down from the midway podium I realized something – I actually had drawn a crowd: a design student who kept asking questions about medical devices; a business professor fascinated by healthcare market dynamics; a retired executive who’d recovered from surgery and couldn’t stop thinking about better tools for physical therapy. They were all looking at me, ready to work.
Each person brought their own perspective on what made an innovation valuable, meaningful, ready. The work found its rhythm. A clinician would mention a challenge, and suddenly a mechanical engineer had three different ways to solve it. A startup founder would share their market research, completely changing how we saw a technology’s potential. Our prototypes evolved through cycles of feedback – each iteration shaped by someone who saw the problem from a new angle.
The path forward was messy the messy accumulation of diverse expertise. The champions I’d been seeking hadn’t disappeared – they just looked different than I’d imagined. Innovation, it turned out, didn’t need distant approval. It needed someone, anyone, to roll up their sleeves and answer questions, build prototypes, and start new ventures. As the crowd grew organically, my appeal to remote experts became the building of pickup innovation teams.
Looking back now, I understand why I was so angry at innovation – I’d been searching for connection in all the wrong places. I thought connection meant finding that one perfect champion, that single voice of validation. Instead, connection was something far more profound: it was the steady warmth of shared purpose, the quiet joy of watching different perspectives illuminate new possibilities.
Innovation didn’t need a champion after all. It needed a community.
a candle, unlit 