My latest Inc. article, “A Contrarian View of Invention,” begins

A Contrarian View of Invention

We put innovation and invention on pedestals. Should we?

I’ll start by pointing out that I have several patents to my name. I conceived of the inventions and wrote the patents. I have advanced degrees in science. I started several ventures.

I’m not writing to brag or put patents or innovation down, just that I think I hold my own on innovation and invention.

Now that I write about and teach leadership and entrepreneurship, I look more at relationships, emotions, and motivations. I look at culture, inside and outside companies.

I recently combined two concepts to realize what our inventive culture says about us.

Neediness

First, speaking of relationships and emotions, consider neediness.

Many people rank it among the most repulsive characteristics someone can have. But don’t take my word for it. Here are two sentences from the first page returned when I searched on “neediness”:

Neediness is a highly toxic mindset and it immediately makes your point of attraction to be rooted in lack

and

neediness is so toxic that it can easily attract negativity in all aspects of your life.

Quora has 73 responses to “Why is neediness such a repulsive characteristic?”

Necessity and Invention

Now consider necessity, not far from neediness. They say that necessity is the mother of invention.

If so, then our culture being inventive implies we’re needy–“a highly toxic mindset”–on a cultural level.

Read the rest at A Contrarian View of Invention.

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