All too often the human race becomes the victim of its own methods of measure. We become caged in ideas that, for better or worse, were largely created over a generation ago. And we protect those cages quite well.

New ideas are generally accepted based on who says them - not how worthy they are. Those of us who think through an idea presented find ourselves awash in people who are quite happy parroting the cerebral flatulence of someone else instead of risking their own cerebral flatulence being made public. And if the someone who said it was considered highly by other generations (not necessarily their own), then the idea becomes as much fact as the planet we are on... to us.

This is the resistance to change. It's not necessarily a bad thing - it filters out a lot of bad stuff too, like an idea to combine a razor with a toothbrush. Unfortunately, it makes us 'measure' everything within an imperfect rating system and build things with an accepted scaffolding that defines the shape of our ideas.

So many people are talking about innovation and creativity when our very systems of deciding what innovation and creativity are could use some...