Do You REALLY Want Innovation?


Are you prepared for the cost, the toll of innovation?

A well-respected expert, an artist, is hired to do a job. It’s not a job he’s ever done before in scale or in technique. He accepts the job anyway.

He toils away for years, working to develop and innovate a method that will allow his work product to be successful based on the limits of the tools he’s been provided.

He fails. Over and over and over again.

The location for the mural isn’t ideal. It’s narrow, dark, and dank. The condition of the surface is well past the conditions appropriate for the type of work requested. Since he’s never worked in this medium, he does not know what will work, so he tries different combinations.

He fails. Over and over and over again.

As fast as he completes the work, it slides off the wall due to conditions and techniques. His associates help, and eventually he loses faith in the details. The bulk is done, and it’s drying, but after three years of aggravation he leaves the final work to be completed by his team.

The final work remains mostly ignored for years … decades … centuries. Semi-hidden away in a remote hallway of a monastery where it quickly deteriorates due to conditions and lack of care. Remodeling ignores the work and cuts a doorway through it.

World order takes over and further damage is done, but despite the pain, failure, and bad will, it remains one of the most celebrated works of art ever known, and it is known by just about everyone in the civilized world of any cognitive age.


The lessons from the Last Supper tell a story much greater than the art itself. Innovation and Creation takes an investment in research and development, and it needs to be constantly nurtured and cared for to retain it’s glory and impact.

Innovation respects, even demands, failure.