"To Kill A Humming Bird"

When talking about creativity or innovation, we should really give credit to what surrounds the innovation when it first came out. What factors helped paving the way for its success. A common misunderstanding is that a successful invention will sell itself, well, in most cases it is far away from truth. A successful idea can only sell itself, if and only IF, the surrounding factors are met properly. Would a successful innovation sell itself?

To promote an innovation, you have to fulfill the four elements of its diffusion: (1) The innovation itself which gets (2) communicated through certain channels (3) over a period of time (4) amongst members of a social system. So, even if we could create a proficient invention, we cannot guarantee that it would be accepted and adopted.
For example, the current typing layout of the very keyboards that we use daily in our PCs or laptops, have you ever wondered why it is laid out the way it is. We only type fast (most of us do anyway) because we got used to it, remember when you first used the keyboard? How difficult that was? I am sure it took you months of practice to be an efficient typist. Now here is the punch line, the current layout was deliberately made like this to slow down typing..!! Most people don’t know that the layout they are using in their keyboard is known as the “QWERTY” layout. (Named after the first six letters on the upper left corner of the keyboard) and this layout persisted since 1873. Almost all individuals who use computers for the first time are taught to use the QWERTY style, not aware that a much more efficient typing style is available..?

The QWERTY keyboard was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes who made it the way it is to slow down typists! Why? Because back then, the typewriter machines consisted of bars that hung down in a sort of basket and pivoted up to strike the paper, then they fill back in place by gravity. Now there was the problem, when two adjacent keys where struck rapidly they jammed, causing a waste of paper, ink and effort. So, Sholes re-engineered the layout to make the most commonly used letters sequence awkward, thus eliminating the jamming of the key bars. Soon the QWERTY keyboard was adopted by most typewriters manufacturers and spread like a wind. Typewriters salesmen were impressing customers with it by typing the word “TYPEWRITER” using only the upper row of the keyboard. However, with the advance of technology, typewriters have evolved and touch keyboards were introduced and by time, the problem of jamming no longer existed, but still the QWERTY design was still used. In 1932, professor August Dvorak of the University of Washington came to realize the difficulty with the QWERTY design, and made an intensive study on it in order to come up with an alternative, his studies highlighted that not only the QWERTY design is less efficient, but also, it overloads the left hand which types 57% of an ordinary typing. Furthermore, only 32% of typing is done on the home row in the QWERTY system. Dvorak then came up with a design (called by his name “the Dvorak layout”) that emphasis more on the stronger right hand (with usage of 57%) and 70% of typing is done on the home row of the keyboard, which helped getting rid of the unnecessary intricate movements that caused mental tension and carpal tunnel syndrome that lead to typographical errors. It takes only a week of training for a QWERTY accustomed typist to master a Dvorak keyboard; however, Dvorak Typists have broken all speed records. Now the question remains, why do we still use the QWERTY design while there is a much superior, more efficient and advanced design? This clearly answers our first question; does a successful innovation sell itself? Clearly not.

Here in our example, communication, time and social system were missing to diffuse the Dvorak innovation. Giving the fact the typewriters manufacturers, and typists trainers and most of the populations were not “aware” of the new and far more efficient design in addition to the failure (of Dvorak supporters) to demonstrate the clear "superiority" of the Dvorak layout. The time consumed by nearly all typists at that time to learn the QWERTY layout was not taken into account when introducing the Dvorak layout, again, the resistance to change or adapt halted the use of the more efficient solution.

To sum up the innovation problems, I guess I’ll have to quote Dee Hock (founder and former CEO of the VISA Credit Card Association.) when he said: “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.”