Saul Kaplan: Thankful Innovation Junkie
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. What’s not to love? Food, family, and football are three of my favorite things. The prodromal smells of homemade cooking pervade the house which means turkey and pecan pie are only days away. Smiling is easy this week while making sure everything is perfect for the welcome cacophony of our kids returning home for a holiday visit to our empty nest. Thanksgiving spirit warms the soul.
Here are ten things I am particularly thankful for:
1) A wife who is my best friend and the love of my life. She is a saint for tolerating this innovation junkie.
2) Three great children who despite our parenting have made us proud by becoming incredible young adults. They learned their lessons in irreverence well and are all exceeding my one expectation, to be interesting. (I should say four great children, including our son-in-law who makes us a better family and fires well on the aforementioned irreverence and interest dimensions.)
3) The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) team who stuck by me when I left my public sector role as an accidental bureaucrat. I learn by hanging around them every day and I intend to stick by them. Together we are catalyzing an inspiring movement to transform the next decade.
4) A growing network of smart and passionate people that I have connected with. Connections seem an impersonal way to describe it. More like friends and fellow innovation travelers.
5) Living in a time when so much innovation is possible. We are blessed with the tools to enable purposeful networks to work on the real social system challenges of education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship. Transformation seems within our reach.
6) The temperament to thrive on steep learning curves and the confidence to realize how much I have to learn. The goal is to get better faster.
7) The blessing of time to write and for a network of innovators who encourage me to write more.
8) Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Apple for enabling this free agent to punch above his fight weight. Self-organizing is no longer an oxymoron.
9) Being surrounded by people with an incredible sense of humor who make me laugh every day.
10) The opportunity to do what I love and to love what I do. Passion really is the secret sauce.
Happy Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for?
Saul Kaplan is the Founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory (BIF). Saul shares innovation musings on his blog at It’s Saul Connected and on Twitter at @skap5.
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