At a recent event, I was given a gift. This happens quite regularly, and always makes me smile - I mean, aren’t they paying my invoice? Its not like I speak for free… But, anyway - its a nice gesture, and besides the odd bit of rubbish corporate gift you get, most of the gifts are interesting and/or useful.

This one was a space pen. A small (half BIC size) ballpoint pen, with some serious technology in it. Invented in 1965 in response to the US’s need for a pen that work in zero gravity in space, this pen has a gas ball in the ink well, that expands as the ink is used, and therefore pushes the ink towards the nib. The pen can write upside down, in space and anywhere. It can write on anything that can be written on in ink. The Space pen company is rightly proud of this brilliant technology and innovation.

The Russians, however, had a similar problem as they were part of the space race. They came up with a different solution for writing in zero gravity. They used pencils!!

Sometimes, we can over-innovate.