“Your curiosity and desire to learn things on your own terms is really a key to success.” – Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO, GE

Winter. Ideas bubble to the surface from interviews, travel, images collected.

Our journey continues for threads of information and resources about a long-ago legend of a man and his tree. That quest led to people with stories and sometimes surprising connections between communities. Discoveries. Names threaded through history and notable contributions. Parker, Hubbard, Wadsworth are a few that keep surfacing in research and because of maps and land use. Collections of design, data, history. Architecture preserved. Eagle claws and stone statuary. Collections.

Which is something to see.

Especially with knowledgeable people who know the stories contained within these objects. Innovation takes many forms. Launching a business. Establishing a brand. To learn from the past and admire obstacles surmounted for achievement, a life-long pursuit.

Branding. Design. Manufacturing. Old ways, new ways. Tradition and innovation intertwine. Unlikely objects spark connections between life and business, what people do and have done.

Design applies to everything manufactured, mechanical, biological. Form follows function in the natural world – observations in nature can lead to innovative ideas. Charles Parker is known far and wide for his manufactured goods that include beautifully-made piano stools, coffee grinders, exquisite shotguns. (More about him in an upcoming story; here's one about the Meriden Historical Society's holdings.)

For instance, how people move around, how goods are transported or available in a local market. The time it takes to get a part, make and grow things. Access by road, river, train, air, shipping. All that takes design and planning, vision and implementation.

Quietly making big changes happen is the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield (NHHS) Rail Program, part of a partnership between the State of Connecticut, Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration, plus the states of Massachusetts and Vermont. The goal is to connect populations living, working or traveling between New Haven, Hartford and Springfield with high-speed rail service. And then on to other destinations in the Northeast.

From the NHHS Winter 2018 newsletter: “The former station, located adjacent to the railroad green at 37 Hall Ave., will no longer operate as a train station but will remain a hub for town life, anchoring the downtown community. The existing station building houses several organizations, including the Wallingford Adult Education Center, and New Haven Society of Model Engineers Railroad Club. Upon opening, the new station immediately began providing service to existing Amtrak trains and soon will begin serving trains on the CTrail Hartford Line service, which is scheduled to launch in May 2018.”

CTrail Hartford Line will link to existing Metro-North commuter rail and Amtrak Acela high-speed rail services on the New Haven Line to New York and on the Northeast Corridor to New London and Boston. The bigger picture is growth of a community with transportation – ideal places to live and to relocate businesses that depend on regional markets and travel.

Oh, and about the bevy of new places to enjoy good food have been discovered along the way? One is growing food in new ways in a former factory with access to markets that has to be seen to be believed. Another is a Middletown restaurant moving to Meriden and expanding. There's a new owner at a beloved “apizza” destination. And a well-established literary restaurant is moving to newly-built (larger) digs across the street from its current location. Stay tuned.

“Capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate — and therefore by human talents — as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident that capitalism is being replaced by ‘talentism’…” – Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum

The first human technologies? Communication, followed by fire and tools – that's an opinion. But think about it. Communication is key. It's how an idea launches from the human brain into thoughts and words that can shuttle from one person to another – to potentially reach millions.

For those with any doubt, here is a way to see the spread of one Tweet launched byy C. J. Marple and the resulting interactive data map created by Twitter Data.

👋 from Twitter HQ! We made an animated map so you can show your students how it spread around the world:https://t.co/zB83Q9KJeX pic.twitter.com/hrjoIu6B0u

— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) January 12, 2018

As the world transforms, observations about what is happening have been compiled into an amazing report by John Maeda (Google defines him as “John Maeda is an American executive, designer, technologist. His work explores the area where business, design, and technology merge.”) and 800-plus designers and design founders, managers, executives, agency leaders, individual contributors. Worth reading is the (2017) Design in Tech Report frames “computational design as a key driver of accelerated growth, with inclusive cultures at work as vital for tech businesses hoping to lead in design.” Have a look. It's an idea sparker.

“The best decisions are often made by diverse groups of people. Saying or hearing these words is magic: That’s really interesting, I had never thought of it that way before. Thank you.” – Mary Meeker, founder of Internet Trends Report and KPCB partner

Editor's note: The quest mentioned above for man and tree continues; more is being learned along the way; stories will be shared here. More will be integrated into an upcoming book.