The Overlooked Secret To Innovation

Inspired by Earl Nightingale

Note: The following post was inspired by a series of talks I heard by Earl Nightingale on his monthly Insight program produced by Nightingale Conant back in the early 1980s. I adapted and expanded his message specifically for innovators. We can all benefit from being reminded by this overlooked secret.

As a society, we have a problem.

Some years ago, the late Nobel Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with people today?” The famous doctor was silent for a moment, then he said, “People simply don’t think!”

Why do some not use our brains and think? The brain is a fabulous mechanism. It is capable of processing eight hundred inputs per second for seventy-five years without exhausting itself.

Scientists tell us that humans use approximately 2 percent of the brainpower available to us. We are all equal. We all have the same 2%.

As a society, some of us have chosen not to use this powerful tool. We let others do our thinking for us. Why?