Innovation comes from small beginnings

We all want to know that what we do makes a difference in the workplace. But it's not always easy to see our everyday contributions as significant. Here's how one presenter inspired her audience to think differently by using an example.

To frame her message, the presenter told her audience about David Bradley. Bradley was a key player in developing the computer industry. He worked at IBM for nearly thirty years, and in 1980, he was one of just twelve people working to create the IBM personal computer. But when he retired in 2004 he was remembered most for just one accomplishment. He was the engineer who wrote the code for Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

This simple sequence of keystrokes forces a computer to restart when it won't respond to any other commands. It's used universally to assist with operating problems that would otherwise incapacitate a computer. Ironically, it took Bradley just five minutes to come up with this historically significant creation.

The presenter closed by making the point that millions of times a day that code is used to help people complete tasks on their computers, and it took just a few minutes to invent.

Like Bradley, we may never realize the impact of our contributions. We may never know when our efforts may produce great and unimagined consequences.