Why No one Understands this?

[prabha_friend]

that IT jobs are not like other jobs but has to be done within 'Comfort Zone'. Innovation happens when your mind is relaxed than Forced! Agree?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Some IT jobs involve little or no innovation on the part of the employee. For instance, system administration (taken in isolation) is highly repetitive and very rarely involves innovation. System operation, particularly the job of Night Operator, is also repetitive. System analysis, on the other hand, can require insights and challenges. I would say that the IT field is broad enough that your generalization is inaccurate.

Also, the idea of "comfort zone" is a chimera. In the USA, we see people who are on welfare or who have low-end jobs and they have NO MOTIVATION to improve themselves. A comfort zone is a prison for some folks, keeping them back from progress. It is an excuse for why they don't do better.

As to the conditions for innovation, I always found that if I didn't have a need, my motive for innovation wasn't triggered very strongly. You don't innovate until you see a need, which implies at least a minimal level of being "forced" - by circumstances. Innovation solves problems. Without problems, there is no need and without need, there is no topic on which your attention is centered. It is HARD to innovate when you are not fully focused on something that has caught your interest. Without the "itch" it is hard to know when and where to "scratch." (Speaking metaphorically, of course...)

Everyone of us is different. Some folks can only work when their mind is calm. When I was writing my first novel, I was under a lot of stress with very strong emotions and the novel was my way of safely dumping those emotions onto paper, a form of therapy. You haven't read my first - or any other - of my novels because so far, no publishers. I don't claim them to be great works of art - but they helped me to disperse the stresses of that time and so weren't wasted.

 

[JonXL]

I don't know, I find the promise of a paycheck or the threat of its discontinuation to be pretty motivating.

 

[prabha_friend]

Some IT jobs involve little or no innovation on the part of the employee. For instance, system administration (taken in isolation) is highly repetitive and very rarely involves innovation. System operation, particularly the job of Night Operator, is also repetitive. System analysis, on the other hand, can require insights and challenges. I would say that the IT field is broad enough that your generalization is inaccurate.

Also, the idea of "comfort zone" is a chimera. In the USA, we see people who are on welfare or who have low-end jobs and they have NO MOTIVATION to improve themselves. A comfort zone is a prison for some folks, keeping them back from progress. It is an excuse for why they don't do better.

As to the conditions for innovation, I always found that if I didn't have a need, my motive for innovation wasn't triggered very strongly. You don't innovate until you see a need, which implies at least a minimal level of being "forced" - by circumstances. Innovation solves problems. Without problems, there is no need and without need, there is no topic on which your attention is centered. It is HARD to innovate when you are not fully focused on something that has caught your interest. Without the "itch" it is hard to know when and where to "scratch." (Speaking metaphorically, of course...)

Everyone of us is different. Some folks can only work when their mind is calm. When I was writing my first novel, I was under a lot of stress with very strong emotions and the novel was my way of safely dumping those emotions onto paper, a form of therapy. You haven't read my first - or any other - of my novels because so far, no publishers. I don't claim them to be great works of art - but they helped me to disperse the stresses of that time and so weren't wasted.

I wanna read your novel. Please provide the link to purchase. One thing is for sure: "Wherever there is Pain. There is Pleasure " (Same Metaphor Here)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Nothing published yet, so no link available. I have five complete novels as part of a series in the fantasy fiction domain, a sword-and-sorcery epic. Also known as the "hack-and-zap" genre. Currently working on the sixth (and presumably final) member of that series and another novel in a new space fantasy.

 

[Isaac]

that IT jobs are not like other jobs but has to be done within 'Comfort Zone'. Innovation happens when your mind is relaxed than Forced! Agree?

Same for me.
One guy I know likes to write code on conference calls with me, spontaneously and under pressure.
I admire it, but couldn't do it.
Gotta be left alone with nobody looking over my shoulder. It's not always a lot of time that I need, but rather, privacy which for my personality, equals what you have here called Comfort

 

[jpl458]

Some IT jobs involve little or no innovation on the part of the employee. For instance, system administration (taken in isolation) is highly repetitive and very rarely involves innovation. System operation, particularly the job of Night Operator, is also repetitive. System analysis, on the other hand, can require insights and challenges. I would say that the IT field is broad enough that your generalization is inaccurate.

Also, the idea of "comfort zone" is a chimera. In the USA, we see people who are on welfare or who have low-end jobs and they have NO MOTIVATION to improve themselves. A comfort zone is a prison for some folks, keeping them back from progress. It is an excuse for why they don't do better.

As to the conditions for innovation, I always found that if I didn't have a need, my motive for innovation wasn't triggered very strongly. You don't innovate until you see a need, which implies at least a minimal level of being "forced" - by circumstances. Innovation solves problems. Without problems, there is no need and without need, there is no topic on which your attention is centered. It is HARD to innovate when you are not fully focused on something that has caught your interest. Without the "itch" it is hard to know when and where to "scratch." (Speaking metaphorically, of course...)

Everyone of us is different. Some folks can only work when their mind is calm. When I was writing my first novel, I was under a lot of stress with very strong emotions and the novel was my way of safely dumping those emotions onto paper, a form of therapy. You haven't read my first - or any other - of my novels because so far, no publishers. I don't claim them to be great works of art - but they helped me to disperse the stresses of that time and so weren't wasted.

What about the internal need to figure things out, or creating programs because it's fun? At one point in my career I was responsible for interviewing prospective programmers. I put three puzzles on the interview table before a candidate arrived, 2 that required taking apart two wires, and one of those plastic squares with the sliding numbers that you had to get in order. When they arrived and were in the interview room, I gave them about 7 to 10 minutes before I walked in. If the puzzles were in the same place I left them, it was strike 2. One of the people I interviewed was a female assembler programmer, and when I walked in the room all the wires were apart, and she was sliding those little plastic numbers around like mad. A few months later she wrote the code in BAL for an IBM 1288 optical scanner in physical I/O that boosted our acceptance rate for handwritten inventory cards from, 70% to 99.2%. The manufacturer wanted her code. She was one of the best I ever saw.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

My belief is that innovation and creativity operate on a spectrum of people in a spectrum of situations. I don't think it is predictable. For instance, chemist August Kekule (1829-1896) was working on the structure of benzene and just couldn't quite get it. Then one night he had a dream of a snake coiled up in a circle eating its own tail. When he awoke, he realized that the dream had given him the answer. He had deduced the structure of a closed-ring hydrocarbon. On the other hand, Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981; 1949 Nobel Prize, physics) simply worked out the properties of a pi meson mathematically, more or less just grinding away.

Innovation is like nuclear decay. You know it WILL happen. You just don't know when or where or whom.

 

[jpl458]

My belief is that innovation and creativity operate on a spectrum of people in a spectrum of situations. I don't think it is predictable. For instance, chemist August Kekule (1829-1896) was working on the structure of benzene and just couldn't quite get it. Then one night he had a dream of a snake coiled up in a circle eating its own tail. When he awoke, he realized that the dream had given him the answer. He had deduced the structure of a closed-ring hydrocarbon. On the other hand, Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981; 1949 Nobel Prize, physics) simply worked out the properties of a pi meson mathematically, more or less just grinding away.

Innovation is like nuclear decay. You know it WILL happen. You just don't know when or where or whom.

You are viewing things from a much higher altitude than me. Your point is well taken. There is a book you might like. 'The Fifth Discipline", by Peter Senge, an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning. He is known as the author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990, rev. 2006). (I had to look up and copy his creds.)

It's the only book about business that ever made sense to me. In that book there are some great words, regarding innovation. Doc, I think it would be right up your alley.

 

[tltanhueco1990]

This it the reason why I'm taking my Master's degree: I don't want to work for a company. I'd rather teach what was taught to me during my Master's life to undergraduates and postgraduates.

For now, I, myself am a Masters student who got career shifted from Hospitality to IT.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

As for me, I'm a PhD chemist who after maybe 12 years got career-shifted into systems administration, systems programming, and systems analysis. Life can be funny like that. But no complaints because I never starved, never was homeless, and managed to stay out of prison. I was always able to take care of myself and provide for my loved ones. I might not have been much of an innovator but the folks in the government liked me because what I did helped them to save decent amounts of money. Now I'm comfortably retired and trying to stay that way.