Tomorrow's Veteran's Day (or at least the corporate holiday equivalent) so I am up late, listening to music, perusing this fine internet we've got, reviewing the day's email (particularly regarding the iTest, as we inch toward closing out the contest year by December 1), and blogging.

Tomorrow, Lori and I head out to Gatlinburg to visit with a couple of college friends of ours while staying at a chalet up there. That'll be a fun diversion for the weekend before heading back on Sunday to see the Titans get back on their winning ways against a difficult Ravens team.

Check this article out. Someone in New York City has started making cubes out of GARBAGE. Yep...goes around picking up trash just right off the street, and sells cubes of it for $100 apiece. Check the part where the guy discusses the importance of packaging...obviously a critical piece of insight there. There is not one single human being on the planet unaffected by corporate marketing; not one individual who is immune from the carefully crafted messages of modern commercialism that are unescapable through the multitude of mass media channels.

Obviously, this is incredible, groundbreaking innovation to do something this radical. But often, its incremental innovation that wins, and not the earth-shattering, mind-blowing stuff like this "garbage cube" story. Think about the jump from the regular iPod to the video iPod, for example. Big step for Apple that kept profits rolling in as they began to slow. Or, at my particular current place of employment, someone had the bright idea to, all of a sudden, start including an updated number of personal vacation hours accrued on the weekly payroll stub. Sounds simple, but really wasn't...but was just the type of incremental innovative step that adds to the company's cultural fabric itself. I could go on and on with other examples.

The basic premise that incremental innovation rules the day over radical innovation, because you just can't wait for lightning to strike, extends well to our personal lives as well. We can't sit there and wait for change ... we have to force the issue where necessary. That one difficult first couple of hours you stop smoking, that unflinchingly difficult first step in the right direction, is the way out...and leads to another couple of hours, another couple of days, another couple of months, another successful story. Obviously, the smoking example could be exchanged for many other scenarios. Just like one incremental innovation in business, the medical realm, the legal realm, or anywhere else ... on top of another ... on top of another, and another, and another ... leads to a successful, best-in-class venture over the long-term.

Who are the innovators out there?

Steve Jobs. Easy one.

Barack O'bama. Any man with a book called "The Audacity of Hope" within him immediately commands my attention.

U2. Innovated so many times that I've lost count, from raising countless new guitar players on The Edge's delay-pedal signature sound to innovating the way that current bands embrace the coexistence of political causes with the realities and necessity of mass marketing.

Warren Buffett. Continues to shape the way we look at investing. A financial rock in the shifty seas of daytrading, get-rich-quick schemes, and other bad ideas.

Kay Tipton. Created a national champion caliber math team program in arguably the most difficult state to do so, Alabama, from scratch. That's innovation.

Bill Gates. Incredibly dynamic leader often mistaken for just another computer nerd, this guy rejected Harvard for a world-changing journey called Microsoft. Imagine telling your parents "no, I don't think I'm going to the best school in the country ... I think I'd rather create a computer in my garage." Right...

My dad. Suffered through the hardships of a family business, then literally started giving the money earned from the sale of the business back to the world through advocating media literacy education and very-public crusades against business practices that harm our culture. I don't know anyone who's done more for the state of Alabama than he has in just a few short years. Many innovations here that were components of the overall outcome.

Hillary Clinton. Definitely an innovator in the way she redefined the role of the first lady from bystander to activist during her husband's tenure. How quickly we forget why she got where she is ... innovation.

Peter Ross. My boss while I spent some time in Beaufort, this man took control of a ship full of holes and almost immediately began using portfolio-leading technology to get occupancy up and instill a sense of mission to the project. Unafraid to incite change and challenge established company norms, he woke me up and got my attention, as well as my respect.

Tiger Woods. This guy is simply amazing. A black man dominating a white man's game, Tiger Woods COMPLETELY rewrote the rules of an entire professional sport while turning himself into his own brand which he continues to successfully use to market anything from Accenture to his own EA video game.

Jim Bradford. Took over as Dean of Vandy's Owen Grad School of Management right as I started business school there, and successfully crafted a magazine-rank-ascending strategy of slanting the school toward the obvious strength of health care management as well as the school's finance program. An incremental innovation, to be sure, but a good one that worked and has paved the way for more innovations later on.

Vince Young. Stared down a USC team full of future NFL players and beat them nearly singlehandedly, and then joined a Titans squad where his ascension into the starting role completely and noticeably changed the entire culture of the team from a downtrodden one into an upbeat, uptempo one. In the world of the NFL, for one guy to have such a profound impact is really amazing. Definitely an innovator.

Al Gore. Held the nation's hand in being the first to successfully articulate the imminent danger of global warming to the masses. But no, didn't invent the internet (THAT joke is DEFINITELY getting too old).

Bill Frist. Changed the way we view our elected officials by becoming the first real Congressional subject matter expert in the field of modern medicine. We have so many career politicians infesting Washington DC that the introduction of a guy who's actually gone and succeeded at another field first is quite refreshing. Another example of an innovator like this would be John Edwards, as well as Arnold Schwarzanegger.

Shigeru Miyamoto. The famous creator of Mario taught the world that video games don't have to be visceral to be captivating. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, you name it, this guy invented those franchises that drove Nintendo to be the only of the big three video game groups that was profitable in FY 06, and continues to spark the inventive culture that pervades Nintendo today.

Weird Al Yankovic. Practically invented an entire genre of music himself by crafting humorous reimaginings of popular songs and gaining popularity in his own right in the process. From infusing his music with polka to his fiendishly clever wordplays that carry his creative song concepts, this guy is as big of an innovator as anyone else in music right now.

I could go on, but why? You get the idea. Innovators are true to themselves, not deviating even slightly from their strategy just because there's skepticism greeting them at every turn. Once they've made up their mind to achieve an outcome, its pretty much over.

Anyway, off to Gatlinburg. Until next time.