DIVERGING RELATIONSHIPS:
innovation comes from those who look beyond

I've already written about my fixation for hybridisation. I like to think that relationships can be divergent, which might sound like an oxymoron but it gets the idea across. After all, they say opposites attract and that's absolutely true for me!

I often look outside and find that strength lies in diversity, a phrase I've cut out and stuck on my wall at home. The strength of contrast is more attractive to me than normality or banality. I find that seemingly different things act as a springboard to change perspective and open your mind.

Nowadays I feel that we should be courageous and think more outside the box. Trying to normalise everything is boring, I'd rather construct chains of relationships that arise out of discordant intuitions and heterogeneous crossovers.

Different places of reference, (apparent) opposites, going beyond the routine - all these things have taught me to make the right judgements (Stefano Chiassai's official Twitter account).

Revolutions arise out of going against something, not just for the sake of it but as an approach towards others. Nowadays, everyone can be as daring as they like, but the difference lies in knowing the limit between real innovation and altering what came before.

It might be a cliché but chaos can lead to the best intuition. We are going through a chaotic, incoherent, confused time, but it's precisely at times like these that “we can't pretend that things will change if we always do the same (…) It is in crisis that invention, discovery and large strategies are born. Whoever overcomes crisis, outdoes himself without being overcome.” This quote has been attributed to Einstein although there is some doubt about that, but what matters is the meaning.

If we observe our surroundings even at times of crisis, everything acquires meaning if we can see beyond without prejudice, finding impulses that can kickstart something new.

The mainstream doesn't help with experimentation, but we always have to bear it in mind because it enables us to have a global overview of the present. A startup like Periscope would not have come about if someone had not looked beyond!