Anyone can innovate.
According to an article in MIT Tech Review, a massive amount of consumers are innovators. They purchase products and customize them to fit their needs. They tinker with things they buy. A survey in the UK showed that there are many more tinkers than those employed as product developers and spend twice as much money when compared to company R&D costs. Even still, many companies often do not listen to these independent innovators.
What does this tell you?
You don't need to be employed as an "engineer" or have a formal title like "director of innovation" to be an innovator. Anyone can do it. You determine your own capabilities and pursue them. We may not have access to the resources and funds that industry R&D engineers have. Therefore, independent innovators would just need to be more adaptive and INNOVATIVE with resources and funding. We just need to be creative, which EVERYONE is capable of.
So, putting all these minor innovators and innovations together, it can create a social network for innovation. Everyone else seems to be exploiting social networking, Why not innovation?
