The Dilemma of Innovation

The Dilemma of Innovation

If necessity is the mother of invention then the urge to improve is the father of innovation.

As per the dictionary, when something new is introduced it is known as innovation. But when does the need to improve arise? Though as such one doesn’t need any reasons to improve. The term improvement, catalyses its own cause. Still it is dearly wished for, specifically, under the circumstances when the existing situation is either incapable of explaining things pertaining to the matter or falls short of absolute clarification. When faced with such predicament we try to come up with new and additional parameters: applying novel methodology, to overcome the barrier of “in-complete” understanding; even “mis-understanding” falls in that category!

If the quantum of luck is loaded heavily in our favour, we are successful and thus applauded for our innovation/s. We then are labeled as being innovative persons. Well, I too thought that my case would not be an exception (as far as acceptance was concerned). But till date, being faced with the contrary, I am being forced to repose my faith in: “ Exception proves the rule”!

All of you might be asking yourselves directly and me, indirectly, as to what I am trying to state? It is simple. I too tried to innovate and bring about a long awaited change, which unfortunately has still not been accepted, even though it has not been rejected outright as such! Well, it is always better to reject something by keeping mum on the project instead of directly saying no! Forsaking it in the wake of the “crippling power of negativity”! So without saying no, they are transmitting the very implication. But then I do believe in the “power of positive thinking”, as they do too, having proved so by not saying “no”! The identity of “they” shall be made clear subsequently.

Well, I didn’t do any crime by trying to innovate as it is being made out to be. I simply have tried and shall continue in this endeavour of mine, to dispel the wrong notion people have about the subject of Chemistry. It would be more appropriate to state that I am trying to tell people that their inhibition for the subject is because of an illusion that I intend to dispel. When I was a student, I had felt my mates’ discomfort with the subject, which I didn’t. Thankfully. Though it was so because I got the best teacher, one could imagine of. Naturally, Chemistry was a subject not to be shunned but to be admired, to me. More so because it served as the window of understanding finer nuances of life as well. To me, Life and Chemistry have intermingled so homogenously that it is impossible for me to draw a “line of control” between the two!
Also as a teacher now, I find students initially appalled by the subject. This incidentally seems paradoxical to me. Why do they take Chemistry if they have such an impression of it? Well, that’s besides the point. Seeing the unaltered feeling for the subject from my student days till now as a teacher and being armed with the answers to unlock the mystery surrounding the subject of Chemistry, I want to share what I know, what I keep on accumulating as time progresses, for the benefit of all. This is a truly selfless intention on my part. Well, generally all innovations are so, barring the ones used for destructive purposes.

You might ask as to how I planned to do it, who would benefit from it, how would it happen; I would like to answer chronologically.

(i)I enlisted my experiences, gathered as a student and later as a teacher in a classroom, till date. They surprisingly had immense similarities with the chemical happenings. So much so that they could be analogized. Thus theories of Chemistry could explain our day-to-day to experiences and vice-versa. I decided to give a shape to my realizations and share the benefits of my understanding. And in trying to do so I ended up creating a book. Written with the best of interests in my heart and mind. Naturally, now I need someone to publish it.

(ii) Speaking of its “benefit quotient” and range of applicability, primary thing it will do is remove the inhibitive halo surrounding the subject. I have heard umpteenth times that “Chemistry is a boring subject. Requires cramming and whence, naturally is felt to be boring and repulsive”. Well, there couldn’t be anything more inappropriate. To me cramming is memorizing without understanding which can have only one outcome: indigestion! The approach towards the subject has to change.
Thus students, who are having and will have in the near and distant future, a harrowing time with it, will find it a handy handbook. An illusion-dispelling manual.
Teachers too stand to benefit, if they are open to the idea of looking at things from a different angle. I don’t intend to say that they have to follow all what has been put down by me. I never for once, mean disrespect to teachers. It is just that they might find a new window, providing a different view, which allows them to think differently. We evolve everyday and if this evolution is for the betterment, then the theory of profit and loss impels us to embrace the profit!

The next area wherein the manual of my ideas might make its presence felt is our regular dealings with our fellow human beings .

(iii) It might seem that I have taken leave of my senses. Yes I have been termed “abnormal” time and again. But to prove my point I need to be heard through my written words. That is why I wrote this book. It is a book having a concrete manuscript, though time and again still being edited by me. Why I say that it has been written with the best of interests is the fact that it is the fact! I felt that by sharing my thoughts I would be giving back the subject something, that has given me so much. Well, I can never dare to quantify what I have got but at least I can try and help others to love the subject so that its appeal increases and subsequently, followers too.
I know for sure the potential of the book, which is a result of innumerable retro analyses and high percentage of successful predictions.
Apart from the student and teachers of the subject, we human beings as such stand to learn a lot from it with respect to the human behaviour. Human bonding, in other terms, relationship (check my blog “relationship” on page, http://introspection.rediffiland.com) or lack of it too, can be explained with quite a bit of accuracy. I take guarantee of that. That is why I refrain from calling it a book of Chemistry. Rather it is a book on Life from the angle of Chemistry and vice-versa. So it would be foolish to bind it in the realms of Chemistry. It transcends all boundaries.

But for all of this to happen the book needs to be published. The reputed publishers, some whom I had contacted earlier, don’t want to take the risk of taking up the project, which they think will incur a huge loss. I can understand the predicament of the publishers and what I state here is with due regards to them. After all who spares a moment of thought for a mad person who is a writer by passion and not by profession.
Though at the moment I am in talks with some of them. I want myself to be taken seriously only because of the potential of the book and its wide range of applicability. It is not that this is my first writing. There are many but I am not trying to promote them or publish them. They are merely my thoughts. But this one, I know will be beneficial to many. So this ardent desire to publish it.

I was even asked to frame it in the prose form with a flowing style. With due regards to the suggestion, since I didn’t know how such a topic could acquire the form of a prose, I did the best I could thereof to suit the requirement. I am thankful to that person for the suggestion, as I could know what was lacking. But then I tackled it in a way I felt appropriate for the cause.

In this regard, people find it easier to flow with the stream of conventional writings and when translated to authors, established ones. The impulse to invest in an amateur author, that too with an abstract idea will be in the negative that I do understand, with due regards to the publishers and the various vagaries of the publishing world. But still I don’t understand this high degree of difficulty in accepting innovations. Why? Is it because of inertia of apprehension? It seems that “no” is a reflex answer. An amateur will remain so, an eternal debutante, unless given the first chance to shed that tag.
And in my case, deadly innovation coming from a first-timer is a seemingly hopeless situation! Two negatives do not make positive always! Thus I have landed myself in a dilemma: as to what to do which to use my manuscript for the desired purpose; all because of my innovations. I never envisaged that an innovation leads to a dilemma, and even if I had, it is true, I wouldn’t have shelved this project. It has consumed much of my sparse time that I have happily devoted, and continues to do so. But for a good cause. And now it is up to you all to put and end to my Dilemma of Innovation. This can so happen only in if it culminates in publishing. All other means of getting it published have met with roadblocks till now.
This is a petition to help me out in this endeavour to end the dilemma, otherwise people will think not twice, but many times before innovating. Innovations if aborted, prohibit the birth of conventions.


SUSHMITA MUKHERJEE,
16th December, 2009