Is innovation about technology?

In a word, no.

It's about connecting people to people, and people to ideas, in ways that generate value that didn't exist before.

Walter Isaacson, author of several "innovation biographies," put it this way in "What Steve Jobs Had in Common with da Vinci," a recent Vanity Fair piece:

"[T]here is a more fundamental trait that connects many of today’s disrupters to most of the great innovators of the past. It’s the understanding that it’s not about the technology. It’s about connecting people to the technology and using the technology to connect humans to other humans."

Of course, technology is a vehicle to facilitate those human connections. But a vehicle is a means, not an end.

Your attention is your most vaulable resource. If you use it to clarify, update, and reinforce the human qualities and connections that your school values, you will find no greater "return on that investment" of your attention.

In other words, innovation really starts--and ends--with your Mission.

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