Discovering America

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Discovering America

March 18, 2009. By Peter Lloyd

To make a real honest mistake, you have to go in earnest after one thing and be open to whatever you actually find. Like Christopher Columbus. He set out to find a new route to the Indies. And he failed. But he made do with a new world, even though today's flat-Earthers would eventually mock him.

To create, invent, and innovate, we need to encourage failures like Columbus. Not whine that Columbus didn't discover America because there were already people on it. That's like saying fish discovered the ocean he crossed because they were already in it. That kind of talk discourages exploration, invention, and innovation. And that can be deadly.

Like America, penicillin was discovered by accident. It literally flew in through an open laboratory window and killed some bacteria in an open Petri dish. So we're supposed to say Alexander Fleming didn't discover it?

Like Columbus, the scientists who eventually did something about Fleming's discovery had to go against the grain. In their day, our brightest medical minds insisted, "anything that can kill infection will eventually kill the patient."

Fleming's discovery opened the route to a new world of miracle drugs.

Now there are so many new developments, the problem is keeping open-minded doctors informed of them, and getting reactionary doctors off routine treatments and into the better ones that keep coming along.

So what are we going to do the next time somebody discovers something we already know? Give them credit whether it's due or not.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.

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