I’m not an expert in economics but I do know their are ways you can innovate in “bad times.”  I’m hearing about recession more and more in the news.  However in my 41 years of living on this planet it seems every day, year or decade is a time of crisis.  I can only remember the early 70’s vaguely but it was the depressing end of the Vietnam war, followed by the recession and “gas crisis”.  In the 80’s everyone was in a big panic about the arms race and the national debt. In the 90’s a lot of people were complaining about Bill Clinton and later in a big panic about Y2K. In this first decade of the 21st century everyone is in a big panic about terrorism, the Iraq war and now the alarms are ringing about recession.

I admit I have a weakness to easily panic, even about the little things like the way my car acts or the way I feel physically, never mind local, national or word wide issues. It’s really easy to focus on those bad things but It’s never the full picture is it? The 70’s had some of the best music ever produced (I’m not talking Disco but even some of that is fun) , Blockbuster movies like Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, etc. and the beginning of video games.  The 80’s were my favorite decade of the past mainly because it was the decade I was in high school and college. I love 80’s music, the 80’s was when the personal computer came into it’s own.  In the 90’s the Internet was widely adopted as a result of the invention of the World Wide Web and the web browser.  Great things about this first decade of the 21st century is mobile computing, portable media like podcasting and digital photography and innovative thinking about ways to make our world and live “greener.”

Just as the cover  the fictional Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy urges the reader to not panic, neither should you and neither should I. You can actually thrive in times you think you are doomed. Some of the best innovation comes during times when you can’t do things the easy way.

Are the rising gas prices scaring you and are you worried about how it effects your business? If you do a lot of driving you might be concerned and have to raise prices. If you do a lot of printing the price of oil will effect the price of print publications.  How can  you leverage the Internet to do remote support, communicate or distribute information?

One of my favorite bloggers is Phil Gerbyshak.  Phil has a great blog and a book called 10 Ways to Make It Great!  I encourage you to visit and subscribe to his blog as well as buy his book.  How are you going to innovate in ‘08?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Innovation, Internet, Portable Media, Tips, blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.