Amar Gautam

At the school they taught me to follow the rules; in the university, they said, “Rules are meant to be broken!” Believe me, since my first day at the school, I have been breaking rules and I strongly propagate that you should try and break rules…

Rules evolve when a conclusion of an experiment, not necessarily scientific though, are established. Those conclusions are sometimes backed up by scientific findings or sometimes by personal perceptions. So in basics, rules are establishments. Establishments could be anything from – “Follow this standard template” to “This is the best design pattern you should use” or “You should not say ‘No’ to a customer”.

We come across very few people who actually challenge these establishments. But obviously you will ask me, “Why would you want someone to challenge an establishment when the life is just okay with them?”

To tell you the truth, all current establishments that you see today is for someone challenged the old ones. Every human being is capable enough to propose new ideas. We do everyday. But we miss the other part of it, experimentation. Unless we experiment, we do not get a conclusion. So further we fail to establish the new finding that we believe in.

So breaking rules means breaking establishments. This directly means you are onto innovation. Remember the establishment of the Geo-centric theory and the breaking of that establishment by the Helio-centric theory. Though this was a discovery and not innovation but I put this as an example to understand that unless you challenge the set rules, you cannot find new things.

Every now and then I am asked to be innovative, but unless I break rules, I cannot. When I do, there is a sense of rejection from everywhere. But I do not get discouraged and finally I am always able to set new rules and establishments for me and others.

But there is something to always be cautious about. When you break rules, you should not be breaking ethics. Ethics are important to any business or innovation. Unless there is a place for it, everything seems to be worthless to me. For example, you should not be breaking security rules like not using helmet or seat belts. We in fact need to identify the rules and establishment those are old to the current context. We need to devise better ways to do things. If new establishments that we propose could help everyone around us to be more effective and productive, is always appreciated.

Innovators do not follow the established rules of the game. They deliberately seek out and challenge the establishment to come up with radical strategies and solutions. So what are you waiting for? Let’s go breaking rules…