Project seeks out innovators
CHILLICOTHE – If you've never taken the time to sit and watch a young child work through a problem or go through the process of creating something, take a moment to do so.
Your eyes will be opened to a world of imagination and inspiration. Unencumbered by the restrictions in creative thought that years of experience have placed upon those of us in the adult world, children can take a collection of seemingly unrelated items and put together something wonderful.
That's what was going on at the Science Toy Festival Wednesday night at the Main Library Annex, an event created by the Chillicothe & Ross County Public Library and the Ohio University-Chillicothe Early Childhood Education program. Children ages 3 through 8 were provided an assortment of ramps, gears, pulleys, wedges, screws, axles, levers and wheels and asked to find a way to put them together into a wind-up toy to take home. The possibilities were endless, the results priceless.
That's innovation in its most basic form. Some ideas worked, some didn't, and for those that failed, there was a second and third chance to stumble across something brilliant. The important thing was to keep trying.
As we, as a newspaper, embark on our extended Five to Thrive examination of what it will take to lead Ross County into the decades to come, and as I, personally, embrace a new role looking at the people, places and initiatives that will make up the future of Chillicothe, there's no way to avoid coming back to that word – innovation.
How do you make a historic downtown thrive in a modern retail climate? Innovation. How do you create an environment that makes business and industry look at Chillicothe and Ross County as prime locations for new manufacturing facilities or store locations? Innovation. How do you develop the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders to bring the community along with them over the next horizon? Innovation.
It's about taking a look at what we have been and exploring what we can be. In much the same way that child with the pulleys, levers and axles experiments, fails and succeeds in creating something new and exciting, the community must marry challenge with creativity, history with progress and present talents with future possibilities.
Toward that end, the Gazette is seeking your help in identifying the state of innovation in the Scioto Valley. We want to find and profile the innovators among us, whether they are entrepreneurs working to get a new business or invention off the ground, businesses embarking on new ventures, educators trying something new in the classroom, job training or retraining programs preparing the workforce for the next generation of challenges or individuals who have tried something new to better their personal or family lives that others in the community may benefit from reading about.
Each of you, whether a lifelong resident or someone who may have just moved in yesterday, has a stake in where innovative thinking may take this community. Let us know who you think will get us there. Please send your suggestions for story ideas or innovators and programs to profile to cbalusik@nncogannett.com or call 740-772-9360.
For this endeavor, the sky's the limit – as all good innovation should be.
Just ask any child.
cbalusik@nncogannett.com
740-772-9360
Twitter: @CGLocaleditor