Article © 2009 – Ms Meltem Etcheberry
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Innovating to move forward!
Innovation derives from all kinds of ideas, different viewpoints, curiosity, and quest for the better. It is an open door to a new world of experiences, full of questions, challenges, and surprises.
In the process of innovation, the only way of bringing out your potential, and those of the others, is to have an open mind that strolls with you in those unknown roads and leads you beyond your limits.
It begins with a need to be fulfilled: “How can I do it?”, “How can I get there?” “Am I missing something?”
The next step is to think out of the box and change the rules: “Can I do it differently?”, “Can this be used in a new way?”
These are questions underlying any new project or development. They pave the way for creation and are the means to move forward.
Nowadays, we should think and design “green”. It means we need to integrate in each step of our projects a new way of thinking. We pay attention to the selection of material and their recycling processes. We use water-based painting or develop special lighting solutions that are both aesthetical and sustainable.
Moving forward for diversity!
In my business and also in my private life, I experience exciting and challenging innovation tools. I love observing my 11-year-old son’s thinking process. He has a double identity thanks to his parents coming from two different cultures. He is bilingual, thinks both ways and understands the complexity of the world. To tackle an issue, he considers alternatives, uses one or the other way, and finally often makes up his own mind, an original conclusion that none of us would have thought of!
On the business level, I work with a team of people from all around the world. They bring with them their identity, culture, their specific way of thinking and their unique life experiences. Our work environment is incredibly rich, but it also requires a capacity to adapt to others, an open mind, a good understanding and tolerance to other people’s viewpoint and references. It slowly changes you. You get to see that no issue has one single solution but a variety of ways how to tackle them. It was an amazing experience for me to understand that I had to validate my Spa project that I developed in Hong Kong with a Feng Shui specialist. But like that we find very efficient business solutions. We think and talk differently, and I strongly believe that innovation begins with diversity!
Diversity for innovating!
I am convinced that to move forward and innovate, we need to welcome new ideas, concepts, as well as new ways of thinking and doing business no matter from how many different horizons they come from and how challenging they can get.