Plymouth鈥檚 Innovation Foundations: Both Stable and Dynamic
Innovation may conjure up something between a gadget one might find in an airplane magazine or an abstract quality appropriate for a business plan鈥攗ltimately, a way to sell something, but the notion can be more generalized. As a geographer by training and nature I have a strong tendency to link places with characteristics.
Can a setting be conducive to innovation, and if so, does our local intersection around 43掳 45鈥橬 and 71掳 41鈥橶 fit the bill? Having carried driver鈥檚 licenses from eight different states and spent ten years contemplating the social and non-human world around Plymouth, I conclude that if places can contain ingredients yielding innovation, we have them.
Diversity is fundamental to producing innovation. You can create a new image with the eight-crayon box, but the 96-count box makes it much easier. Too often diversity is a stand-in for ethnic and racial diversity, but human worlds carry many more categories and to produce something novel, it鈥檚 best to start with as many options as possible.
