April 22, 2025. Innovation.

It's a cozy afternoon in my bedroom, and I find myself contemplating a concept that's been at the heart of my journey. 

Innovation. 

What does it truly mean to innovate? 

Is it simply creating something new, or is it something deeper, more fundamental to human existence? 

After hitting the wall with MIKE-AI and considering my next moves, these questions feel particularly pressing.

Innovation has ancient roots, with discussions dating back to Greek philosophers who viewed innovation as something connected to political action. Interestingly, the concept wasn't always viewed positively, Plato expressed skepticism about innovation in education and culture, and for centuries, being labeled an "innovator" could be dangerous, associated with heresy and revolution. 

It wasn't until the 19th century that innovation began to take on the positive connotation it holds today.

In its most basic form, innovation might be described as the implementation of a new idea that creates value. Or could be defined as "a new or changed entity, realizing or redistributing value.", But these definitions feel incomplete to me. They focus on the outcome rather than the process, on the what rather than the how or why. 

After spending countless nights coding MIKE-AI, watching it evolve from concept to working prototype, I've come to see innovation not as a single moment of inspiration, but as a continuous dialogue between possibility and constraint.

When I wrote the beauty of choices, I said how each choice doesn't just select between existing options but creates new ones? I believe innovation follows a similar pattern. Each innovative step doesn't just solve an existing problem; it creates a new landscape of possibilities that didn't exist before. When Tesla wasn't just making better combustion engines, but reimagining what a car could be, he weren't just improving, he was expanding the possibility space itself.

And again,, this perspective connects deeply to quantum mechanics, where particles exist in states of superposition until observed. Innovation is like intentionally collapsing these quantum states in ways that haven't been done before. Every inventor, every creator, every founder is essentially an observer collapsing potential into reality in novel configurations. What makes innovation special is not just that it's new, but that it collapses potential in ways that others didn't see or consider possible.

The question of how to innovate has consumed countless books, lectures, and consultancies. Some advocate for structured processes – Design Thinking with its empathize-define-ideate-prototype-test cycle, the Lean Startup methodology with its build-measure-learn feedback loop, or the Stage-Gate model with its distinct phases from ideation to launch. Others emphasize the importance of creative destruction, of overthrowing existing paradigms. 

Having worked on MIKE-AI in my bedroom with that damn chair, I've found that innovation rarely follows a neat, prescribed path. It's messier, more organic, more deeply connected to the specific context in which it occurs. Like those quantum particles taking all possible paths simultaneously, innovation often explores multiple approaches before settling on the most promising one.

From my experience, innovation emerges at the intersection of deep knowledge and open questioning. You need to understand the rules deeply enough to know why they exist, and then have the courage to ask: "But what if there's another way?" Like that moment when I was debugging MIKE-AI at 3 AM and realized the entire approach to context processing needed to be reconsidered. I wouldn't have seen that without both the technical knowledge and the willingness to question my own assumptions.

Innovation also requires a particular relationship with failure. As I've written about forgiveness, learning to embrace mistakes as data points rather than defeats is essential. Every error message that kept me awake was not just a bug to fix, but an insight into how the system actually works versus how I thought it worked. Innovation happens in that gap between expectation and reality, in the space where our mental models fail to capture what's actually happening.

Throughout history, we've seen how innovation has moved in distinct waves or cycles. From the early tools and fire of prehistoric times, through ancient inventions like the wheel and writing, to the Renaissance with its printing press, and into the Industrial Revolution with the steam engine and mechanization. The 20th century accelerated this process dramatically, starting with airplanes and automobiles and ending with the internet and mobile computing. Now in the 21st century, we're seeing innovation frontiers in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, renewable energy, and quantum computing.

Then why does innovation exist at all? This question touches on something fundamental about human nature. We innovate because we can imagine states of the world that don't yet exist. We can hold in our minds both what is and what could be, and this tension drives us to bridge that gap. It's almost as if we're wired to collapse those quantum states of possibility, to make real what previously existed only in imagination.

There's something deeply human about this process. While MIKE-AI could help me process information, connect dots, even generate new combinations of existing ideas, it couldn't truly innovate because it lacked that embodied experience of the world, that ineffable quality of consciousness that allows us to not just pattern-match, but to create genuine novelty. Innovation stems from our subjective experience of reality, from our ability to feel dissatisfaction with what is and imagine alternatives.

The history of innovation reveals patterns that might guide us. Contrary to popular mythology, most innovation doesn't come from lone geniuses working in isolation. It emerges from networks of people building on each other's ideas, from ecosystems that support experimentation and risk-taking. Even when I was working alone, I was building on generations of previous work in computer science, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. 

No innovation happens in a vacuum.

This networked nature of innovation connects to my post about never walking alone. Even as a solo founder, I'm part of a larger wave of human progress, connected to others who are pushing boundaries in their own ways. Innovation is both deeply personal and emerging from our unique perspective and experiences but also a fundamentally collective, building on and contributing to our shared knowledge.

Innovation also has a complex relationship with constraints. When I hit the wall with MIKE-AI, unable to scale it due to computing resources and capital limitations, at first I initially saw this as the end of that particular journey. But constraints, while limiting in obvious ways, also direct our attention, focus our efforts, and sometimes lead to more elegant solutions than might have emerged with unlimited resources. The history of innovation is full of examples where constraints led to creative breakthroughs that might not have happened otherwise.

As we move deeper into the 21st century, sustainability-driven innovation has become increasingly important. This involves creating new products, services, or processes that reduce resource use and environmental impact while still providing value. It requires taking a full lifecycle view, considering impacts from design to disposal, and integrating environmental, social, and financial sustainability into the innovation process. This approach not only helps the environment but can also reduce costs, build business resilience, and provide competitive advantages.

Then there's the question of purpose. Why innovate? Beyond the economic rewards, beyond the status or recognition, what drives us to create something new? I believe it connects to that fear I wrote about, the fear of being averaged and irrelevant. Innovation is our way of making a unique contribution, of ensuring that our specific configuration of experiences and insights finds expression in the world. It's how we leave our signature on reality, how we say "I was here, and I saw something others didn't see."

But innovation without purpose can become innovation for its own sake, a hollow pursuit of novelty without meaning. The truly transformative innovations are those that serve humanity in some way, that enhance our capabilities, solve meaningful problems, or allow us to live more fully.

As I contemplate my next ventures after MIKE-AI, I'm carrying these reflections on innovation with me. I'm asking not just "What can I build?" but "What should I build?" Not just "Is this possible?" but "Is this valuable?" Not just "Can this scale?" but "Should this scale?" Innovation isn't just about making something new; it's about making something better, something that moves us toward a future more aligned with our highest values and aspirations.

Innovation exists in that beautiful tension between what is and what could be, between the constraints of reality and the limitless potential of imagination. It's a fundamentally human activity, born from our unique ability to exist simultaneously in the present and in possible futures we can envision. And perhaps most importantly, it's never finished. Each innovation creates new possibilities, new problems, new opportunities for further innovation.

As I'm writing this, contemplating what comes next after MIKE-AI, I'm reminded that innovation isn't a destination but a journey, not a single quantum collapse but a continuous unfolding of possibility into reality. The wall I hit wasn't the end of innovation but merely a redirect toward paths I hadn't yet explored, toward possibilities that remain in superposition, waiting to be observed and made real. Maybe the true essence of innovation is the courage to collapse quantum potential in ways that others haven't yet imagined, guided by a vision of what the world could be rather than limited by what it currently is. 

In that sense, every innovator is both an observer of reality and a creator of it, both bound by what exists and stretching toward what doesn't yet exist but could.

And perhaps that's why I'm still thinking, still dreaming, still building. Because in the end, innovation isn't just what we do. It's how we express our humanity most fully. It's how we say to the universe: this reality you've given us is beautiful, but we can imagine it being even better, and we're going to bring that better reality into existence.