Why Innovation & Design are Important for a Thriving Nation
During one of my very first UX classes, I was introduced to the five whys technique. My classmates and I were asked to pair up and ask each other the objective statement, “Why is Design Important?” It was challenging for me, coming up with an answer to such a complex question on the spot and having to build upon it an additional four times. The question stuck with me throughout the week and I continued to dwell on it. I quickly realized that the answer is quite simple: design and innovation are everything for achieving a thriving and successful nation.
I additionally wanted to note for the purpose of this article I am considering innovation and design to be interchangeable. I believe that the two go hand-in-hand. Without design, a new idea would never make its way to the hands of the user. Without a new idea, there wouldn’t be anything to design.
In a world that is constantly moving forward with brand new ideas, there are consequences for the nations that are not keeping up: stagnation. While stagnation in a country has many of the obvious connotations such as fewer job opportunities that may lead to increased poverty, I think it also brings something even scarier that is more difficult to spot: complacency. Once the government of a nation begins to feel complacenct with the country, the people and their dreams are shattered, and the generations begin to grow without knowing how to dream. It is the hope and dream of ideation and innovation that keeps people going. With the rumination of a nation’s hyrarchy, there is no room for ideas to grow. In fact, to the government, new ideas begin to become scary, sometimes punishable to the extreme. If you’re not moving forward, in reality, you are falling behind with respect to the global community.
The only way we can avoid stagnation is to continue moving forward and encouraging innovation and new ideas. This is why innovation is so important — it prevents us from the dangers of rumination. It gives us hope and keeps our dreams alive. A nation that’s thriving does not make new ideas punishable, they encourage and reward new ideas. Due to this, people are generally happy and continuously inspired. They continue to come up with new ideas that help make important changes in the world. I believe our nation has done a reasonably good job of rewarding innovation and design in recent years.
Will we continue to be a leading nation in innovation and design? I suppose only time will tell.
Why Innovation & Design are Important for a Thriving Nation was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.