Everything around us comes from us, humans. This is the focal point of innovation: driving us, as humans, to come up with new things. That is only possible if we question and think about our experiences, believing everything is possible. Through corporate innovation labs, it is possible to bring together the artistic (from humans) and the scientific (from experimentation).

Corporate Innovation Labs Bring Together and Differentiate Progress

Art is about making changes. It is about evolution, about bringing together studies of and perspectives on that what already exists. This is true for both what is in the mind and the physical. Science, by contrast, is a lot more constrained because it has to follow linear rules. There is an important place for that, but innovation labs are about bringing those two together. It is about exploration, with art being about coming up with ideas, and science being about turning those ideas into reality.

Science and Art – The Cornerstones of Innovation

Art is known to drive scientific innovation. Similarly, science is an inspiration for art. Essentially, they are innovation’s bookends, their cornerstones. They work together to change how we see the world. One cannot exist without the other, and that is something to be celebrated.

However, people continue to see the two as separate things. Metaphorically, they are the bookends, one being on the right and the other on the left. But we forget that the things in between the two bookends are what actually brings them together. This is where the real breakthrough ideas happen.

How to Get Art and Science to Fuse

Science, engineering, design, and art all have to come together if we are to experience great innovation. Design and art is about getting the compelling stories and analogies together. This is about challenging knowledge and methods, inspiring techniques, and creating alternative structures. This is what then makes people push engineering, technology, and science, who will translate the art and design into reality. It is about pushing boundaries, going beyond what is expected, and that is how the future will be shaped.

At the same time, the digital age has made the world more complex and it is important that innovation tools are in place to benefit from this complexity, rather than make it stop innovation. What corporate innovation labs can do is provide that platform in which art and science can be blended, converged, integrated, and exchanged. Some say that we are in the Renaissance period of innovation. Real progress is currently being made and these are exciting times. The original Renaissance truly changed the world, teaching us so much as humans that the pace of advancement was almost unheard of. But, at the same time, the Renaissance was destructive as well, rather than solely constructive. It is hoped that the new Renaissance, which is as much about art and science as the original one, will be even more constructive in nature, using lessons learned in the past to really drive improvement.