The Men Who Stare at Goats – and Innovate

What makes you stop and stare?

What inspires you?

I’ve written many times about the role of inspiration in innovation, and there are lots of sources of both inspiration and innovation. For me, inspiration is so important to innovation that I put inspiration at the center of my Eight I’s of Infinite Innovation framework (traducido al español por Vanessa Lopez-De la O). While inspiration is of course important, there are seven other I’s in the Eight I’s framework that help to transform inspiration into income. I came across a video, on Yahoo! Sports of all places, that inspired me. It shows goats engaging in a very unusual behavior with a metal ribbon.

Here’s the video:

The video of the goats’ behavior made me not just stare, but also made me think about several things, including:

1. What a fun way to play king of the mountain
2. This is a great demonstration of the importance of flexibility, balance, and perseverance
3. All athletes need off-season training, maybe this is off-season training for goats
4. Just about anything will make me laugh (5 million views can’t be wrong)
5. How long before someone tries to turn a metal ribbon into the next Zumba like craze?
6. How long will it be before Cirque du Soleil creates a metal ribbon act?

What else can we learn from this video?

Well, in my previous post Secret to Innovation Success Revealed! I shared that I see successful innovation as being composed of:

• Invention
• Entrepreneurship
• Collaboration

Some might disagree with me, but I believe animals can be inventive, and we can see in the video the goats collaborating. But are the goats being entrepreneurial here?

Are humans the only animals that innovate?

What can we learn from the behavior, physics, or architecture of other animals that might inspire us to achieve success with our current innovation challenge?

Keep innovating!

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Braden Kelley is a popular innovation speaker, embeds innovation across the organization with innovation training, and builds B2B content marketing strategies that drive increased revenue, visibility and inbound sales leads. He has recently begun distributing Innovation eLearning and is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons. He tweets from @innovate.