Wait with patience innovators, your time shall come

Wait with patience innovators, your time shall come

An all-original poem by Sujay Rao Mandavilli

 

Innovation may be defined as an ingenious activity that creates added value or novelty,

And is the bedrock and heartthrob of man’s progress in civilization and society,

It is also essential and crucial for the evolving needs of society and accompanying increases in productivity,

And leads to improved workflow and efficiency,

Driving in due turn material growth and productivity,

With exalted souls pursuing an elevated process or a modus operandi,

It also leads to evergreen competitive advantage invariably,

And verdant comparative advantage inevitably,

It is the hallmark of righteous learning and true leadership,

Of long-term strategy and effective stewardship,

It shatters the status quo,

And takes us where only a few have dared to go,

It also fosters the knack of thinking innovatively and creatively,

 

And helps us stop thinking within the box and conventionally,

 

It is similar to invention as inventors share a common thread with innovators,

Who of rapid and significant societal change are true ambassadors,

With necessity, urgency of cause and adaptability being prime drivers,

We have had innovators and inventors since hoary antiquity and time immemorial,

Who have contributed immensely to science, knowledge and discovery in a manner non-banal,

Said with emphatic authority the illustrious Aristarchus of Samos,

The earth is not the centre of the cosmos,

Philolaus concurred with his idea of cosmic harmony and order,

Anaxagoras, he was noted for the idea of a primordial mixture,  

Anaximander created a celestial sphere in just imagination,

Plato circulated his influential dialogues with true determination,

Aristotle wrote with unmatched proficiency treatises on logic, ethics, and metaphysics,

Socrates was known indubitably for his Socratic dialogue and dialectics,

Archimedes while pondering about buoyancy stepped famously out of a bath tub,

Inventors are indeed uncannily associated with what we may call a metaphorical light bulb,

Pasteur's and Redi’s experiments disproved the theory of spontaneous generation,

Though the mysteries of the origin of life continue to confound us in utter stupefaction,

To Kepler we owe his three laws of planetary motion,

The law of gravity was proposed by Isaac Newton,

Gutenberg unknowingly lit a million minds,

Just like Copernicus’ non-serendipitous finds.

The pioneers of automation were the likes of Charles Babbage,

And glorious mathematician Ada Lovelace,

While on the other hand philosophers Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell,

Brought out the quintessence of the human experience in a nutshell,

Darwin, Spencer and Wallace cast clarity on biological evolution,

While Weber, Comte and Durkheim pointed the needle of precision on cultural evolution,

Gregor Mendel birthed the science of genetics but his recognition was delayed beyond imagination,

As was the case with Rosalind Franklin and Alfred Wagner,

Noddack and Chandrashekar,

We will always have underappreciated geniuses,

Or in some cases wholly unappreciated geniuses,

Mavericks, crankcases and geniuses are sometimes not from each other distinguished,  

As was in the case of Abel, Ramanujam, Euler, or Gauss,

We must learn, cherish and hold in our breath the Importance of patience,  

The importance of commitment and perseverance,

Despair not if the world cannot keep up with you,

Despair not if you are way ahead of the world,

And the world oddly thinks you are way behind it,

That is indeed a common characteristic,

It is sheer idiocy,

And lunacy,  

Time is the best magistrate,

And time is the official adjudicator to effectively arbitrate,

Pierce died in indigence and poverty,

Boltzmann took his own life calamitously,

Bruno was burnt at the stake for heresy,

While Galileo was house imprisoned for blasphemy,  

Yet they changed the world beyond all shackles of imagination,

Stay till the course has been run and hang on steadfast,

Your turn will come at last,

Skeptics and crooks will push you around,

Skeptics and crooks will run you to the ground, 

Berate you, belittle you, and deride you,

Attempting to tumble you down,

From your esteemed and magnificent crown,

This is but a short-lived and a short-sighted fallacy,  

The truth shall ultimately prevail,

Shortcuts are pathways to hell,

And shall the fair and just name of science shall assail,

Only the incompetent get rich quick and fast,

Only the incompetent get famous quick and fast,

Untie the Gordon knot,

Sling a moon shot,

And change will soon be afoot,

Lay bare the Easter eggs,

Score some brownie points in the process,

Don’t trade in or yield to the ephemeral and the fake,

And let your work be transparent not opaque,

The just will triumph and win,

The unjust will fret and lose,

Just like the fraudster of the Piltdown man hoax Dawson,

Or the perpetrator of the Schon scandal,

That is a golden lesson we must understand and cherish,

The undeserving and the underlings will eventually perish,

So emerge from the abyss of blissful oblivion,

See things differently and with magnificent and grandiose vision,

Merge concepts and abstractions in true elision,

Dare to dream big and greatly envision,

Dare to be different and unique,

And jettison all thoughts grotesque,

Think far and push the envelope and the boundaries of stifling conventions,

Be bridges and also build magnificent bridges and pontoons,

Forge ahead you brave postilions,

Break all convention,

Thwart all opposition,

Emerge from the shadows of dogma and skepticism,

Shatter the glass ceiling and let your creative juices flow,

Muster all muscle and sinew,

Predetermine and preposition your every move,

And regularly and unfailingly replenish yourself anew,

Then yours will be the pantheon of glory,

Dabble if necessary in the weird and the out of the ordinary,

Move the goal posts slowly and surely, 

Blow out all barriers and break all boundaries,

Rise above manacles and don’t be weaklings,

Break the manacles and plod on with roughshod determination,

Ride sky–high in the face of all determined opposition,

The cup of victory shall eventually be yours my friend,

We are not born with a silver spoon,

We do not inherit a golden cup,

The shadows of darkness are only temporary,

Never mind if the whole world brands you loony,

Do not condescend in a manner sepulchral and stony,

You may be seen as dangerous,

You may be seen as reckless and brash,

You may be seen as revolutionary,

But yours shall be the golden cherry,

The wise have spoken about the need to sway the earth in true measure,

Said Archmedes, “Give me a pole and a place to stand and I shall shake the earth”,

Continue to do so my friend with gay abandon and unmitigated pleasure,  

Remember always that only the legacies of the wise, the determined and the right shall inherit the earth.