As an animal species humans are hard-wired to intuitively recognise the need for change and to react accordingly.

Our ancestors knew when the land was fallow and they had to move on; when the weather was too hot or too cold and find an alternative living space. We knew food was running low and we went out to find more. We knew our body was not working properly and we sought to remedy it.

As much as change meant effort, we also knew that not making the effort might have rendered us extinct, hungry, cold, thirsty, lonely and a myriad of other negative outcomes, so we innovated and changed.

And then somewhere in our history we decided to congregate together on mass, to allow an individual or group to rule us and make laws that dictate the confines of what we can do and to ensure allegiance and community safeguard we accepted these norms and learned that change was not all that good if it wasn’t community sanctioned or pre-approved.

In our recent history the industrial revolution decided that many hands make light work and we got a workforce together in one place at one time, told them what, when and how to do things and knocked out of them the desire to deviate from these set tasks by marking anyone that tried to innovate as insubordinate and marking repeat offenders as potentially unemployable.

Now this is not meant to be bleak and it is a very quick overview of a much larger discussion, but it’s where Phil Whelan of Hong Kong Radio 3 and I started our regular chat, trying to come to understand whether innovation and change are merely today’s newest buzzwords, or part of what makes us human.

A great discussion looking at all things innovation, placing technology as the catalyst not the cause for the upsurge in “innovation” and exploring examples of the good, bad and ugly of tomorrow’s innovative world.

Have a listen to the segment now (14 minutes 48 seconds)