She didn’t spend weeks searching for the perfect idea.
She didn’t pore over design patent databases.
She didn’t hire consultants.
She didn’t attend a startup incubator.
She simply looked around her own home and noticed a problem.
“Mom is always losing her phone.”
Her solution?
It was a phone cover that glowed bright pink in the dark whenever the phone rang.
She eagerly explained it to me.
“Dad, here’s how it works. Mom can’t find her phone, so you turn out the lights and call her number. The cover lights up, and she finds it.”
Simple.
Practical.
Delightfully clever.
Did she build a working prototype?
No.
Did she raise seed capital from her grandparents?
No.
Did she pitch venture capitalists?
Not even close.
None of that mattered.
What mattered was something much more important.
That lesson proved far more valuable than any invention itself.
Years later, our family entered an unimaginably difficult chapter. My daughter became seriously ill. Because of complications from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and POTS, she spent eighteen months homebound from school.
For many young people, that might have become the defining chapter of their education.
Instead, at her very worst, she kept asking questions.
When she felt up to it, she problem solved.
She kept looking for ways around her physical, emotional, and educational obstacles instead of accepting them as permanent.
Eventually, she returned to high school and graduated with an advanced diploma.
Looking back, I don’t think Glowker was just an elementary school project. It was the beginning of a habit of mind.
Schools have become exceptionally good at rewarding correct answers.
Businesses have become remarkably efficient at rewarding flawless execution.
Neither spends enough time cultivating invention.
We tell young people to prepare for careers.
We encourage them to accumulate credentials.
We ask them to memorize information that increasingly sits one prompt away inside an AI model.
But how often do we simply ask:
“What problem have you noticed?”
Or perhaps even more importantly:
“How would you attempt to solve it?”
That may become one of the most valuable questions of the Agentic AI era.
The value shifts upstream.
Toward identifying the right problems.
Toward reframing them.
Toward seeing possibilities others overlook.
Toward imagining solutions no one has yet considered.
I still believe that.
But discernment and invention? They are first cousins.
Discernment helps us recognize which problems actually matter.
Inventiveness helps us imagine what doesn’t yet exist.
Together, they create something extraordinarily powerful.
Some of the most memorable candidates I presented to clients weren’t always the smartest people in the room.
Nor were they always the most experienced.
They shared something else.
When describing their work, they almost never started by listing responsibilities or talking about money-motivation.
Instead, they described difficult problems.
They talked about untangling impossible situations.
They explained how they simplified complexity.
They reverse-engineered broken processes.
They connected ideas no one else had thought to connect.
They weren’t motivated by titles.
They were energized by solving hard things.
At the time, I viewed that as an admirable personality trait.
Now I wonder whether it was an early glimpse of what employers will increasingly seek in the AI-infused Modern Workplace.
Because if AI becomes exceptionally good at generating answers, then humans become increasingly valuable for discovering better questions.
If AI can execute known processes, humans become indispensable for inventing new ones.
If AI can optimize existing systems, humans create the breakthroughs by noticing what everyone else has stopped seeing.
They’re not really about inventions.
They’re about agency.
They’re about teaching children that the world is not simply something to adapt to.
It is something they can improve.
Imagine if every student graduated believing that every frustration represented an opportunity to invent something better.
Imagine if universities rewarded curiosity as much as specialization.
Imagine if employers hired not only for technical capability but for the habit of seeing possibilities hidden inside everyday problems.
That sounds less like a nice educational philosophy.
It sounds like a competitive advantage.
Increasingly, it will reward those who notice more.
Those who ask better questions.
Those who quietly observe what everyone else accepts as inevitable and then wonder:
“There has to be a better way.”
My daughter called hers Glowker.
The name never mattered.
The mindset always did.
Guided by the spirit of invention, I believe that our best days lie ahead.
Note: image in this post was rendered on ChatGPT based on our prompts.
I’m Dan Smolen. As host and executive producer of What’s Your Work Fit? I help you make your work and workplace decisions result in better and more satisfying professional experiences and outcomes. I am also a Founding Member of The Future of Work Alliance.
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