Age: Not a Significant Factor

Age 36, Albert Einstein completes his General Theory of Relativity (1915)
Age 41, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue that discovered North America (1492)
Age 51, Ronald Regan becomes a Republican (1962)
Age 53, Walt Disney opens a theme park in California (1955)
Age 72, Albert Einstein takes fun picture by sticking his tongue out on his birthday (1951)
This is just a short list of some things I'd like to refer back to throughout my life. Age should not be a significant factor when considering change, learning, risk takings, etc. I got this information from 03 October 2008 article out of the The Week magazine which highlighted excerpts from Eric Hanson's book titled, The Book of Ages. The article Life by the Numbers (pg 44 - 45) had roughly 50 examples out of Mr. Hanson's book that I really enjoyed.

Its never to late to try something new, be yourself, change, challenge yourself, follow your heart, and the list goes on and on... Age should not be a limiting factor. I think that we limit ourselves from being and doing better. One common excuse we can easily fall back on is "I'll too old for that" or "Maybe if I was your age" or "If I could be young again". Age is just one of many excuses. STOP Listening and go DO something great!

Innovation at 3M

Here is some interesting information I gathered from "Innovation at 3M" a Harvard Business Review article published 23 July 2002. Intuit is working very hard to be a Premier Innovative Growth company. 3M is a great benchmark for Intuit to use because it has been a innovative leader for the past several decades.

Here are some interesting facts:

• 3M inventors motivated by individuals love for discovery and recognition (no royalty sharing)
• All staff given 15% free time to explore new ideas (often outside assigned responsibilities)
• Hosted internal showcases for products & ideas which assisted company-wide collaboration.
• Awarded innovation & provided in-house grants for innovative projects
• One of 3M’s main objectives in the 1990’s was to produce 30% of sales from products that did not exist four years earlier
• Increased emphasis on creating new to the world products instead of line extensions
• 6.5 to 7.0 cents of every sales dollar was spent on laboratory-based R&D (1997 was just over $1 billion)
• Global customer base (operating in more than 60 countries and received half of its revenue and half of its operating income)