Genesis of an innovation

What sparks an innovation ? Does it always require a genius ?

The other day, I while scrolling through an endless stream of facebook jokes, and I came across this.

“ A lady (could have been a gentleman) complained at a computer shop, claiming that the new laptop computer she had bought would not carry out even the basic functions. On enquiry she explained that she was not able to copy a file from her old laptop to the new one. When asked how exactly she proceeded to carry out this task, she explained,

“I right clicked on the file icon on the old laptop, unplugged the mouse, carefully took it to the new laptop and plugged it and did a right click paste”

The salesman fainted.

The joke was followed by typical facebook responses ; ‘haha’, ‘LOL’, ‘ROFL’ etc. Amidst all that what caught my attention was the comment “That’s an interesting idea, a mouse with a memory”.

It got me thinking.

People who were very comfortable using the command line interface  designed the Graphical User Interface for the not so tech-savvy users to click their way through the digital world. Till today, many Unix/Linux users cannot understand how 'ten clicks' can be easier to do than a simple command on the terminal.  The  aim is to design a  'user-friendly' device.

Find out what an user is doing , and make your device work to such behaviour, and you have the ultimate user-friendly device.

Why can’t we have a mouse with a memory? After all we have an internet dongle with memory and storage space of its own? Make it a wireless mouse and it would be a ‘wow’ gadget. Point at a file, do a right –click copy , put it into your pocket and now you are ready to do a right-click paste – transfer to any other PC !

As for the cyber-security police , it would mean a terrible nightmare.

Coming back to the question what sparks an innovation, may be it does not need a spark of genius, even a spark of acute idiocy would do.