Mukesh Renuka Sood, the director of global marketing and communications at the Institute of Manufacturing, told the audience at the Innovation Congress. “Innovation takes the complexity and the pain of the problem-solving and finding the best solution.” And a lack of access to the best solutions means innovation remains in the realms of research. “They’re always doing something,” she said.

The fact is, the best ideas don’t come easy, and they’re sometimes stifled by lack of access. We can’t have a discussion, say, on how people will benefit from the electric vehicle if it doesn’t run on electricity, if you can’t walk around a city and not see one or two in existence. These issues are important but they’re also complicated. We have to think this through.

The problem with being an innovator is that you don’t know what’s right until you’ve tried. When I asked about his initial reaction to hearing about the initiative in Silicon Valley, Sood said, “I was sort of stunned. I hadn’t heard of this.” He thought it sounded promising. “But I wasn’t sure about the funding level because we were going up against a group within the state government,” Sood said, referring to the California Global Opportunity Fund. He’s not sure where the program might fit among all the competing programs in state government. But at an event at the university, several representatives argued that the best ideas are going to come from outside the government. The state’s Innovation Program itself would be just one part of the solution.

The challenge for Sood and others is this lack of knowledge about what an innovation is and what it does. Is it the kind of innovation that helps change the world forever and perhaps the kind that will solve some of the world’s social problems? Or is it something just more familiar and mundane: an opportunity for profit? It comes down to how companies look at their future. It’s a question worth asking.

Here’s another way to think about it.

What’s the most important thing an innovator needs to learn right now to create an idea with the right scale and scale-effect?

Sood’s answer: “Knowledge.” It’s an odd response, but we’re now facing a time when there are a lot of people who know a lot about new technologies – even those they haven’t personally used yet. One thing Sood makes clear is that the