Video Transcript: "Innovation"

In this video, we're going to dive into what is the biblical standard for innovation.  There is a myth of creativity. I mean, there seems to be somewhat of an  obsession with creativity and being a creative person, and I don't want to do  things that aren't creative and and so what does the Bible say about that? In  Ecclesiastes 1:9, it says, what has been will be again, and what has been done  will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. So I want us to, in this  course, be careful about the terms that we're using, so that we make sure that  we're approaching business from a biblical perspective, and not just kind of  throwing around terms that really don't line up with biblical theology of business,  because We really cannot technically create anything in the biblical sense, we  can only make things out of what God has already made. And that may sound  like not really much of a there might not be much of a distinction there. But let's  look at the Hebrew So in Genesis, it says that God formed man in His own  image. So the Hebrew term there is yatsar. He didn't truly create man in the  biblical sense. I mean, he created the dust of the ground. He created all of the  things that he had created, the stars and the and the planets and so on the  grass of all of those things God created. And but he formed man, which is very  interesting, that he did not create man in the way that he created the planets. He formed man out of things that already existed and and so man was formed from  the dust of the ground. The Bible says. So this is a different word than Bara,  which is the word for create, and that's really the word that we need to be using  when we're talking about how we are making things in the marketplace. We are  not creative. We are not creating things. In the business world, we are making  things. We are forming things. It will be more biblically accurate looking there in  Genesis to say that God formed man from the dust than to say that God created man and and so certainly, God is the Creator. He created everything that we  have at our disposal. He is the one that set everything in motion. But I just use  that one example to show that there are different Hebrew terms for that, for  making, and then there's one or forming, and then there's one for creating  something. And so as much as we want to be creatives in the world, and  bringing things that did not exist into existence, and and kind of feeling like  we're, you know, I don't know. I think there's somewhat of an ego trip. I may be a little bit cynical about this but, but I will, and I try to make sure that I'm on the the leading edge of things in my industry, and I don't want to do things that don't  matter. I don't want to do things that have already been done. But that's the  reality of where we are in Ecclesiastes 1:9, there is nothing new under the sun.  God has already made it all. We are makers. We are managers, formers and  reformers. We are not owners, masters and creators. That's what God does. We simply are the stewards of the power of that ability to form and reform things and manage the things that God has already made. So in order for us to understand  a biblical definition of innovation and a biblical standard for innovation, we have  to first understand that God made it all, and we are simply stewards. We simply 

are able to manage and form and make things out of what God has already  created. So what is innovation? How are we to think about it? I love this, and I  Googled it. I cannot find where who actually said this, but the statement  innovation is when two old ideas shake hands for the first time, and that's really  all we're doing as innovators. And we can do some pretty awesome innovations.  Again, I'm using a word awesome that's kind of been overused. We can do  some pretty extraordinary things through innovation, by simply forming and  bringing together the things that God has already made, that maybe nobody has ever thought to put together. That's what innovation is, from a Biblical sense.  And Steve Jobs, I think, was on to something. He was still using the term  creativity but, but he said creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a  creative person how they did something, may they may feel a little guilty  because they didn't really do it. They just saw something, it seemed obvious to  them after a while, that's because they were able to connect experiences  they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences, or thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that's too rare commodity, commodity. A  lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. They don't  have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without  a broad perspective on the problem. So innovation done well is simply having  more dots to connect, getting more experience thinking more outside the box  than just sort of conventional thinking. But it's not sort of this quest to create  something that didn't exist before, because innovation, from a Christ centered  world view, it begins with understanding that God made it all. There's nothing  new under the sun. And when you can tune into the voice of the Holy Spirit,  that's where those witty inventions that the Bible talks about, that's where those  those those innovative ideas, those innovative ideas, can come from. And  there's this term used, and it's just really kind of overused, this idea of being a  disrupter. It kind of goes hand in hand with I want to be a creative I want to be a  creative person in life. I don't just want to do things that that have already been  done, that's that's all, that's all well and good but, but there is it kind of goes  further when we're talking about I only want to do things that are disruptive in  society, that are disruptive in the marketplace. You know, I want to be like Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry, or Uber disrupted the taxicab industry. So why? If  that's your heart is to and there's different ways to look at, look at how those  things are happening, but I'm talking about the heart motivation behind our  innovation. Certainly, after you do something like bring an Uber into the taxi cab  industry or bring an Airbnb into the hospitality hotel industry, it certainly is  disruptive, and it certainly has an effect like, you know, Jesus coming into The  coming into the temple and overturning the tables, even though he didn't  necessarily aim to be a disrupter. He came to be restorer. We're going to talk  about that in a minute, but it looked like it was disruption. It looked like it was a 

revolution. And sometimes things can seem that way, but we need to have a  cries, the heart of Jesus, the mind of Christ when we're going into business and  innovation, innovation. And so these are some of the consequences of having a  disruptive approach. If that that's the heart motivation is that working ideas that  don't seem quote, unquote creative are despised and often dismissed because  they just don't seem significant enough. A disruption focused innovators  experience overwhelming fear of being insignificant. You know, they compare  themselves to Elon Musk or to, you know, the guys that are founding these just  companies that are having a cataclysmic effect in some of these industries, and  they just feel like nothing mattered. They can't settle on moving forward with  anything in the marketplace as a startup, because it just doesn't seem significant enough. Opportunities for collaboration are often missed because the disruptor  wants to take all the credit and be known as the one who disrupted that industry. And there's often a lack of massive action taken, and you just kind of get seized  up with this, this paralysis analysis of how to. To do something that is truly  disruptive. But when you think about somebody like Elvis, he didn't set out to  disrupt jazz per se. He wanted to create rock and roll. He wanted to he wanted  to bring some other musical styles together that had not not been brought  together before his his heart in the matter, far as I know, was not necessarily. I  just want to go into this. And I'm just tired of this style of music, and I want to just come in and disrupt it. You know, some people are coming into different  industries and business that way, and it's really not productive disruptors think  less like stewards of God's creation and more like sovereign masters of their  own. And so again, going from this humanistic world view of I'm sort of the  center of everything in my own marketplace, and that everything really exists for  my own purposes. And I'm I'm trying to take away from everybody else's chip  stack so I can build up my own is part and parcel with this idea of thinking like a  disruptor and just kind of going in with that kind of a motivation to and to an  industry. So what's the alternative? And I know that was all sounded kind of  cynical, but I'm going somewhere, and here's where I'm going, is that the the  heart of Jesus, in the biblical approach to in the biblical standard for innovation  is not just a disruptive approach, it's a restorative approach. And we see this  with Jesus. He was aiming. Jesus often gets painted as sort of this, this  revolutionary that just came in. He was kind of a social justice figure that just  wanted to just revolutionize everything. And yes, he did revolutionize the way  things were going here on earth when he came but his heart was not when  you're the when you're the maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things.  You don't have to just just disrupt things you're you're restoring things back to  the way they ought to be, the way that you originally made them. If you're God,  which we are not, but we are. That is our responsibility, and our calling is to  restore, is to, as Jesus said, seek and to save that which was lost. He said this  was His mission statement, that he didn't just come on the scene just to upend 

things, but that he came on the scene to seek and to save, to restore something  ancient, timeless and transcendent, beyond the world systems and so a  restorative approach to innovation is not about promoting the next big thing. It's  about restoring something. It's about restoring what humanity is lacking or is lost altogether. I mean, I've invented a special type of chair that didn't exist on the  market, and my heart was not to disrupt the ergonomic furniture office furniture  industry or something like that. I simply was trying to restore something that had  been lost in my own life. In my case, I was suffering from chronic back pain as a  result of sitting at a desk day in, day out, and I started experimenting with  different things, and I won't go into all of that, but I simply took existing concepts  that were out on the market that had never been put together before, and I  blended the two to create something that had not been brought into this industry, And I'm in the process of bringing that to market as I speak. And but it's not I  didn't come into this again with the disruptive heart. I came in it with a restorative heart, starting with my own problem to be solved and and then ultimately, trying  to help other people with the same problem. So even though the innovation, it  may seem radical and revolutionary, where, as in the case of Jesus, you may be thinking, well, you know, Jesus came into the temple and he flipped over the  tables, well, it may seem radical, and it certainly was radical, but that was  because culture had so radically departed from original intent. And that's what  we're called to do, is to call the culture and the people back to God's standards  for business, and that's. What this course is all about, and in so doing, we  express the kingly aspect of our royal priesthood, as we talked about in the first  unit, and how we are called to be a royal priesthood. And the kingly aspect is to  provide we're to provide restorative solutions, and that's what you see Jesus  constantly doing throughout his life in ministry, is being the solution to the  problem. And so now, what are some of those examples of restorative  innovation? Well, providing remedies for human illnesses or illiteracy. I mean,  that's something that I'm trying to do with my my special invention that's actually  right next to me, as I, as I, as I teach you right now. But we are called to restore  with our innovation that might be in the medical field, that might be with illiteracy. My wife, she taught English over the Internet to people that are speaking  English as a second language in other countries. And so that's just one way that  we're able to be restorative innovators through the business world, another  example is to fill gaps in customer service or to help save precious time that  people are wasting in their daily lives. I mean, that's one of the things, one of the reasons why I love Uber and the ability to pull out my phone where you know,  just being able to see what's happening on the phone, I don't know when I get  into a cab. I don't know if I'm being taken advantage of. I don't know how those  meters work. I don't know how long it's act. It actually should take to get from  point A to point B, but with my phone now with Uber, I can see it should take this long. In fact, we're going to tell you exactly how much it's going to cost you 

before you even get in the car, and we're going to give you ratings and reviews  on the driver who's going to be picking you up, so that there's that social proof  and and that you can be comfortable with your experience of having a complete  stranger come and pick you up in a car and take you somewhere, restoring  dignity where it seems to have been degraded is another approach. So we're  not just talking about the marketplace, but there are other ways. I mean, even  certainly within the marketplace, of being able to work with people that maybe  don't think the way that you do, maybe that don't look the way you do, but being  able to to work with them in a way that is honoring to God, promoting the  opportunity to experience greater happiness and fulfillment in life. I mean, that's  that's really what we do in business, is to make people's lives better, to provide  solutions, to help improve people's lives and And so pretty much any type of  innovation. And again, it really depends on your heart motivation, if you're  coming into business and you just kind of want to just get your name out there  and get your name in lights and disrupt an industry, and kind of be seen as that  type of, that type of a figure, that's really not a biblical approach, that would be  More of a disruptive approach to innovation, but we're called to be restorative  innovators in business as Christians, that is the Christ centered standard.