Quote of the week, about innovation and inventions, by Mr. Nassim Taleb:

If you think that the inventions we see around us came from someone sitting in a cubicle and concocting them according to a timetable, think again: almost everything of the moment is the product of serendipity.

I couldn’t agree more. Bonus points to Mr. Taleb for using the word “serendipity“, which I think is damn cool, both in form and in content – have a look at the Wikipedia article for details.

I think it’s very unfortunate that the majority of the industries which claim to “thrive on innovation” is actually built up and set up in a way that is counter to the creation of the real innovations and inventions.

This means cubicles, strict timetables, no idle time, “deliver it yesterday”-mentality of ubiquitous sense of haste.

Innovations and inventions are born out of idle time, when there is ample time to play with new things and to explore them; from the passion to understand what makes things tick; from clever ways of looking at the mundane and arriving at the unexpected – just like Mr. Taleb said.