I watched The Aviator a few days ago, a fairly recently made film about a great/interesting/eccentric/controversial man, Howard Hughes.

For those of you who don't know, or aren't American, Howard Hughes (as the cover describes it) was one of the great industrialists of the 20th century. He was fortunate enough to have been born with an oil spoon in his mouth, a source of capital that acted as enabler for his vision.

This film (and the further reading I did subsequently) left me with the burning question, this posts namesake, where are the industrialists?  I have previously read admonishment of a society that focuses on endeavours of a sporting or celebrity nature over academic or social. We hear this occassionally, ironically in the same weekend newspaper magazines that present us with images of celebrity golfers adorning the latest must have timepiece.

I think that equally so we seem to value the commercial outcomes of endeavour over the underlying progress that may have been afforded to us by its success. Put simply how much money something makes appears more important than the positive change we are able to bring about as a result of that thing (innovation, device, technology, system etc).

Commercial success appears the barometer.

Now, why is this a problem? Let me create a simile for you. Do you know someone who is money centric? who defines (i.e. talks about) the quality of something or the importance of something by making reference to it in dollar terms.  If we, the innovators/businesses/industrialists were creating for this person.. or a market of people represented by these types of people then our priority becomes to appeal to their monetary sense of worth. In this scenario quality becomes synonymous with cost but more importantly the commercial success of doing something becomes the measure of whether it is worth doing.

True industrialists, and I believe Howard Hughes was one of these, use the change they can see on their visions horizon as the motivation for their actions. Commercial success is a potential output of this activity not the driver. If anything commercial success is simply a way to fund that which comes next.

Perhaps as a society we ended up focussing on the wrong type of change.