After two long, but rewarding weeks teaching technology and innovation at the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Colorado, I was at the Denver airport waiting on my flight back to Houston. I had parked at a charging station and was working on my computer when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something hit the ground right in front of where I was sitting. I couldn’t identify what it was, but looked up and saw a Southwest flight attendant that was running in the other direction.
As I gazed back to look at what had fallen, a man sitting closer to the item than me jumped up, picked it up and started running after the woman. They both disappeared around the corner. Hmmmm, something’s up!
After a couple of minutes, the man returned. I told him how impressed I was at how quickly he took action and asked what the item was. Turns out it was an expensive bejeweled Swiss watch. The flight attendant was moving so fast she did not notice that the watch had fallen from her wrist. It is likely that she might have made her flight, but not have noticed the missing watch in time to locate it. The man was clearly a Good Samaritan who recognized that something valuable had fallen and was able bodied enough to chase her down and return the valuable item to her.
I thought about what I would have done? I am sure had the man not taken it first, I would have walked over to see what it was. Upon seeing it as a watch, expensive or not, I would have wanted to return it to her. But, as I am overweight and have both an artificial hip and a bad knee (caused by years of overwork due to the hip), there is NO WAY that I would have been able to have chased her down. In fact, I only run if a) a bear is chasing me or b) someone with a gun is chasing me. In both cases, if I am not in the clear within 25 yards, I lie down and play dead. Or quickly become actually dead.
I would have taken the watch to a Southwest gate agent and explained what I saw. I figure that the Southwest employee would turn the watch in to lost and found and the flight attendant would get her watch back. But sadly, I supposed someone might have picked up that watch and just put it in his or her pocket.
My point is that regardless of the fact that I couldn’t run the woman down doesn’t mean that I cannot do anything. We often think that if we can’t do a specific thing, it means we can’t do anything. There is always something that you can do, and hopefully, it falls in line with the “right” thing to do in that moment.
Innovation is like this also. We often think that if we are not innovating on something big, then we should not “waste time” on innovation at all. We need to be constantly looking for innovations, regardless of how small they may be. Tiny innovations leads to small innovations which leads to medium innovations which sparks truly monumental innovation. Crawl, walk, run your way to big innovation. And when you have the chance, do the right thing …