We give a lot of tours of our design facility, Inventionland, here at Davison. Local schools, Boy Scouts, university students, corporate executives and others have walked the faux brick pathways, enjoyed the waterways and sat in the grass of Inventionland. Each came through our invention factory with lists of questions and left with a new understanding of what a creative workplace can be.

Now, I’ve talked about youth before, but a recent visit from a fifth-grade aspiring inventor reminded me of our role in educating future creators. Seeing this young man walk through reminded me of the other children before him. It’s their eyes. They remind me of why we are where we are today. The poet/artist William Blake often spoke of the innocence of children and its relation to the creative mindset. He’s right. I can see it in the eyes of our visitors. Children often have that anything-is-possible attitude and they maintain it until someone tells them that not everything is possible. Inventionland aims to bring back the notion that anything really is possible.

By inspiring the youth with this type of belief system (or perhaps they inspire us with it), we’ll be able to foster creativity as second nature to them. This is what we need to preserve our lead amongst other nations in the innovation race. Globalization opened up the world market in technology and industrial design, which means there are billions of potential competitors waiting for their own inspiration to create the next big thing. We need to be one step ahead of this. I think we are in many ways.

Watching that fifth grader with his big eyes and non-stop questioning, I realized we have a glorious future ahead of us.