My father ran R&D at Armstrong World Industries for decades, until a couple of years after the “quarterly earnings report” culture set in. After three reorganizations, he resigned before following orders and doing a fourth.
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My mother died last year. I spent this past summer throwing out even more weight than the kitchen sink. (🙌I cleared out half the house!) Right now, my father’s patents are next to his fraternity framed pictures, his bowling team league trophy, his bar lamp and his father’s carpentry tools.
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He had a B.S. degree in Chemistry, me in Chemical Engineering. But our degrees feel different than his patents. They feel like talismans.
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Earthiness
Manipulator
Renegade
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The Chetty article makes me wonder where my own inventfulness stems. My father never brought me to his office, very rarely talked about Armstrong, and when he did it was mostly about fellow employees or corporate culture. Even though he has boxes of books (dare I throw them out?) on Industrial Process Management, that topic only came up when he was criticizing how our country’s innovation culture began being sacrificed in the 1980s.
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When I’m aware that I might be doing something innovative, I sense it first as a visceral, guttural reaction. A feeling of pride, demonstrating my expert craftiness working in the medium.
Not being dependent on Big Data, Dirty Energy,
and all the other big words.
