Griggs: Can I get some meaning with my innovation?
Memories of the farm in eastern France ebbed as my hosts asked if I’d like to see his grave. Our lunch at the Van Gogh house included two bottles of La Petite Chardonne ’10 and a legalized version of absinth with the sugar-cube drizzle. Wondering why I hadn’t known the impressionist painter was buried north of Paris in Auvers-sur-Oise, mere kilometers away. This troubled artist drenched his creations with color and meaning.
Stunning innovation often has little to do with the idea. Like Van Gogh’s impact on impressionism, great innovation synchronizes gut-churning sacrifice with the kind of meaning blessed to harness or cursed to endure.
Van Gogh’s sacrifices were many — yet he still pushed limits. Nearly starving and suffering from mental illness, he mixed his paints, amplified the colors he saw and even built his own frames — all this while desperately hoping and praying that his brother Theo could sell a single painting. Like many genuine innovators, Van Gogh powered on with a savage passion. His three-franc-per-night hotel room, where he ate, slept and died, gave little preview of the hundred-million-dollar price tag his paintings would one day garner.
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Van Gogh never pitched, curried favor or swam with sharks — he painted with crazed meaning. Other geniuses walked a different path. Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci were sheltered, protected and funded by the House of Medici in Florence. Michael and Leo may have sacrificed, but it didn’t compare to what drove Vinny to starve, cut off an ear lobe and finally shoot himself. I wouldn’t want this for myself or anyone else — but I’m lured to the edgy passion and devilish commitment this 19th-century painter showed.
Many are beginning to chafe at the idolatry before the altar of the almighty startup. Society does back-flips over a teenager’s new app and drools at the serial entrepreneur’s next new project. We sense more effort in the publicity than in the baby. There’s a hovering echo of greedy, frenetic pitches, yet not a whimper from the exhausted impressionist — he’s busy creating; she’s mastering her craft. I choked hearing the story of the San Francisco startup foursome that raised millions, promptly failed, and yet, continued to reside in the penthouse apartment off the remaining funds from the boondoggle. The version I heard recounted how they were looking for new money — for the next adventure. Vincent just rolled over.
It’s time to find, admire and fund the innovator with meaning. This implies honoring an individual or a team that plows ahead without the funds or the publicity. These are people and companies and not-for-profits that will live in a car, a basement or an industrial sublease — just to keep moving. I worked with them in Silicon Valley with the Promoting Upstart Businesses group. They met at my house in California for monthly Across the River Writers Roundtable meetings. Many entrepreneur buddies and consulting compatriots faltered in the face of the new century’s disruptive technologies. I smelled their stress-sweat after the dot-com, dot-bomb fiasco — we all lost our footing while struggling to keep moving. Those who survived were steeped in meaning.
Van Gogh anguished over something that impacts few of us today — too much meaning. (OK, mental illness played a part.) He drained his heart, soul and real blood into France’s countryside. Those years still fill us with brilliant sunflowers and swirling stars. Lingering at his grave, as my hosts gently returned to the car, I spent some alone time with Vincent. Sunken white letters engraved in the rough stone marker red, “Ici repose Vincent Van Gogh.” I quietly wondered if a tiny bit of his passion and meaning might wear off on my struggle with innovation.
Rick Griggs is the inventor of the rolestorming creativity tool and founder of the Quid Novi Innovation conference. Reach him at rick@griggsachieve.com or 970.690.7327.
