How to think outside the box and innovate new ideas
Is it possible that all this time you’ve had ‘Fosbury flop’ ideas cross your mind? Have you dismissed these ideas because they seem ‘unrealistic’?
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Environment Drives Innovation
Up until the 1960s, high jump athletes cleared the bar and landed on hard ground—sawdust, sand and low mats.
As a result, innovation of the high jump techniques attempted to ensure that the athletes landed on their feet.
Fortunately for Dick Fosbury, his high school was one of the first to install a deep foam matting for high jump landing.
This new environmental shift gave Fosbury the opportunity to try out new ways to clear the bar i.e. Landing on his back instead of his leg.
Fosbury wasn’t the only person to innovate new ways of clearing the bar.
Around this same period, a Canadian teenager, Debbie Brill, also decided to experiment with new ways of clearing the bar, after the foam landing mat was introduced to her high school. [4]
Just like Fosbury, she would also clear the bar backwards instead of the forward conventional method.
She went on to break high jump records and in 1970, at the age of only 16 years old, Brill became the first North American female to clear six feet using her “Brill bend” technique.
This is why the right environment is crucial for innovation and success.
There was no way that the Fosbury flop could have been innovated prior to the introduction of the foam mats—because the innovation of the Fosbury flop depended on the existence of a foam mat for a soft landing.
Whenever there’s a new change in environment, there will always be new opportunities for a better way of solving the same problem.