Image: Pinault Collection, Paris, March 2026
Connecting Dots is the monthly newsletter for innovation leaders by Brett Macfarlane.
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HOW TO INNOVATE MEANINGFULLY IN AN INCREASINGLY GENERIC WORLD
Explore the need for awe, not automation, in the way we choose to make innovative journeys of discovery.
It’s never been easier to make something, and yet it’s never been harder to say why. As the most over‑informed and tool-rich generation in history, we can effortlessly create a product in Tampa for someone in Turin to perform the same basic task we had last week in Toronto, or slumber into the same tech conference walk-on music and polished motion graphics as our counterparts in Tokyo and competitors in Tangier—while wearing a jazzy lanyard manufactured in Toledo with designs delivered from Taipei.
Where once we made products of discovery, delight, and devastating beauty, we now download, book, and buy whatever an algorithm generically personalizes for our curated, optimized attention—like everybody else, anywhere else. What used to be full of awe—an unexpected customer insight born from firsthand observation in the field, concert-grade music from a conference room sound system, the anticipation of a cross‑town courier delivering a tactile prototype, or following your nose to choose your next team meal—has become safe, generic, and predictable as a 4.4 star rating.
But the more streamlined the experience, the less space there is for meaning. The joy of getting confused, of observing aimlessly and ending up somewhere unexpected, has been engineered out in favour of faux frictionless optimization. Meticulously planned agendas have stripped away discovery, leaving little room for the genuinely new. The professional thrill of stumbling across unexpected customer behaviour or emerging needs buried in messy customer behaviour spotted by a distant colleague in unexpected placed has been replaced by comfortable benchmarking; we now move through processes that are efficient, but forgettable, at work and in life.
For all this hyper-intelligence, there’s a nagging hollowness—which is precisely why place and people matter. When everything can come from anywhere, each place has a monopoly on its “there.” From that “there,” and from those people, uniqueness emerges—when it is protected as such.
My On running shoes could only have come from Zurich, just as my Arc’teryx raincoat could only come from Vancouver.
A Tesla Cybertruck could only come from Hawthorne, California, just as a Renault Twingo could only come from its leafy Parisian suburb on the southern banks of the Seine.
Wise’s deceivingly simple global money transfer product could only come from Estonian co‑founders based in London, working in the building originally built for Sir Thomas Lipton’s global tea empire.
In each case, the core logic and sensibility come from what was observed in place—and how that place shaped what was made. This atomic whole cannot be forged from atomized benchmark slides and feature matrices. For innovators like Buckminster Fuller, Martha Stewart, Dieter Rams, and Zaha Hadid, innovation is not a lifestyle, position statement, or abstract aspiration in the annual report; it is a way of being. It is grounded in dislocation, discovery, and dynamic experimentation. Build from curiosity, conviction, creativity, and courage.
Ever After: A Trilogy (I... I... I...) (2019)
At its heart, it is about observation—being in a place, part of a crowd, while watching as if from above. Sitting in a busy café near your office, noticing who shows up and the mood they carry. Waiting for a flight without knowing how delayed it might be, observing how groups gather and interact, fidgeting with devices, charms, or athleisure zippers.
It’s the ethnographic act of noticing patterns that repeat, diverge, or shift. New needs emerge: the alpine‑climbing‑inspired iPhone security strap for the university graduate returning from summer internships, or their parent’s leather flip‑phone case, slowly fading in the retiree’s 501 Levi’s, still valued for its trusty tactile ergonomics by increasingly arthritic hands ravaged on the frontlines of work.
Recently, I’ve noticed a return to niche groups and sub‑communities—not online, where the fragments that once defined the internet have flattened into sameness, but in real places, among real people. These groups prioritize coming together around shared interests. They are not about optimization, KPIs, or use cases. They cannot be flattened into personas, identity flags, or neatly mapped onto sales funnels. However useful such things might be. Rather, they thrive on creativity, community, camaraderie, connection, and cooperation.
Just as a Monet is not a Matisse, a run club in Shanghai is not a run club in Sydney. Each is shaped by its origin, its preferences, and the phenomenological texture of its place—and by the observations of those who brought it into being. A constant exchange of taking and making culture, where uniqueness is the origin of value, meaning, and endurability.
In large organizations, this nuance is hard to appreciate. Harder to protect. Hardest to conceive. And yet it can be done. It is people—not raw computational analysis or rigid technocratic processes—that make it so. As a senior executive, your role is to enable and protect that nuance within your colleagues—first inside the organization, so it can exist outside your walls. Don’t first ask for a report; observe how colleagues work, how others respond to them, and your response to both. An organization can only innovate to the extent that it can tolerate change. Can they tolerate change? Can you tolerate them changing? The absence of change is a silent canary in the innovation coal mine.
Notre Dame, Paris, March 2026 (post resoration of vibrant colours hidden by centries of soot unleashing fresh innovation)
For innovators: get out, and take others with you. If there is no awe in your work—or in how you work—it will show in the result. Be the most inspiring part of your colleagues’ day. Empathize with what your work demands of them as much as, if not more than, you empathize with end customers. Build them a prototype; invite them to help iterate—don’t just show them reports. Take them into the field, or bring a sense of “out there” into wherever your office may be. Listen—because if you can trigger quiet awe in them, your toughest internal audience, you are on the right track.
When we think of awe, we often imagine mountaintops and grand accomplishments. Instead, look inward—to your organization—and bring that sense of awe out from within and call out what’s all around already there, if you pay attention. It starts by fostering the micro‑awe of a raised eyebrow, an “ooh,” an “ah,” an “I never thought of that,” a “no way,” a “really?”, a “how interesting,” and a “tell me more.” Often with a head tilt, shift in seat, or slight slide of a hand for bracing. It may feel uncomfortable as you question false certainty, or question without an obvious answer, but follow the evidence in how people respond in all their confounding originality, defiance of sameness, and adoration of recognition.
Meaningful work and innovation don’t flatten; they linger, challenge, and leave you sharper—more attuned to what you didn’t know you needed, or ever imagined possible. As you wrap up summer and head into “strategy season” to plan for the year ahead, look around for what’s different and unique. Notice the novel. Return your work, culture, and capabilities to what’s unique to you, where you are. You’ll be more innovative for it—and we’d all love what that proves to mean.
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Questions, reflections and feedback to info@brettmacfarlane.com
