nnovation may conjure up something between a gadget one might find in an airplane magazine or an abstract quality appropriate for a business plan—ultimately, a way to sell something, but the notion can be more generalized. As a geographer by training and nature I have a strong tendency to link places with characteristics.
Can a setting be conducive to innovation, and if so, does our local intersection around 43° 45’N and 71° 41’W fit the bill? Having carried driver’s licenses from eight different states and spent ten years contemplating the social and non-human world around Plymouth, I conclude that if places can contain ingredients yielding innovation, we have them.
Diversity is fundamental to producing innovation. You can create a new image with the eight-crayon box, but the 96-count box makes it much easier. Too often diversity is a stand-in for ethnic and racial diversity, but human worlds carry many more categories and to produce something novel, it’s best to start with as many options as possible.
Our region’s indigenous, colonial, and even recent histories are fascinating and easy to witness, and our diverse cultural history is well documented. Growing up in Texas, a building from 1920 was worth a field trip in my elementary school, but in New Hampshire, we are likely to be reading this in a much older structure. Take a drive down any road—paved or otherwise—and you will find expansive restored farmhouses and much more humble dwellings close by.
Along the way could be a forester, manufacturing worker, teacher, financial analyst, or a farmer. In Plymouth, you have a higher probability of also meeting a biologist, art historian, NCAA basketball coach, or a concert pianist. This random resident may have attended school during the Kennedy assassinations or when 9/11 occurred.
As you make your way to the outskirts of Plymouth (which is mostly outskirts, after all) it’s clear that few things are generic. We don’t do cookie-cutter suburbia, we like our strip-malls concentrated in one area, and we hardly have national brand fast food restaurants. There are few straight lines on our map and hardly any grids.
This business individualism also means that more of the money spent on everyday needs stays closer to home and actually impacts your neighbors. Despite television and country music imagery, the opposite is true in the vast majority of American small towns, where mass-produced dominates.
Our diverse economic geography is not “historic,” it is lived. Run-down or bland neighborhoods may have bubbling brooks, epic stands of maples, or fascinating glacial remnants nearby. Manifest variety is an innovation catalyst.
Our non-human context is equally diverse in morphology, species, and over time. This is why our region is one of the oldest nature tourism destinations in the Americas. The oldest hiking trail in the US, the Crawford Path, turned 200 recently and is just up the road. We are in the most rugged mountains east of the Mississippi and have more botanic diversity than most of the Rockies. Our landscapes are humanized but have been thoroughly and intentionally recovered from the scars of industrialization. They are also very accessible. About 50 million people live within a day’s drive, which made COVID easier for our tourism economy to weather.
Innovation can often be just as simple as combining two disparate concepts or things in a new way, but it also seems to need a motivating purpose to the creativity, which is probably why the hand-carved-snow-shovel-as-art-form has never taken off…what’s the point? A principal site of motivation is the University itself. Faculty and staff are motivated people who are here to motivate. Students are taking their own initiative to attend college and thus are self-selected for being driven. We are all collaborating to foster learning and skills that will create something new.
Diversity yields novelty, and by adding motivated creativity the result can be an innovative location. Places are the ultimate complexity. Geographers would shun the cliché of calling Plymouth ‘a unique place’ but places can have unique combinations of characteristics that produce innovation. For example, the Canary Islands’ Silbo Gomero language, which is “spoken” by loud multi-tonal whistling that can be comprehended up to three miles across steep rocky peaks and valleys. Plymouth probably won’t yield a new language, but we do have the built-in potential to produce innovation.
Want to be a Plymouth innovator? It doesn’t need to be an invention in the material sense. It can be an idea, word, process, image, or even a new movement. It can be a renewal of these types in a different context or a bricolage—a novel repurposing.
We’re encouraged to take the diversities that surround us and create something new. It could just help you out or make the world a better place. It might make you or someone else some money but remember that innovation can be an end in itself.
Whatever it is, just tell folks it came from Plymouth. ■ Professor Adam Keul is program coordinator of both the tourism & hospitality management and geography programs
Many people, especially younger people, have trouble deciding where to travel or settle down. This region offers a healthy in between, two hours to Portland and Boston and a day trip to New York.
The innovation you see in New Hampshire focuses less on fancy and modern but plays more on a nostalgic theme. New Hampshire is almost its own brand, with cozy towns like Lincoln, North Conway, Plymouth, or Wolfeboro, just to name a few. This region attracts all types of tourists, especially those who love the outdoors.
With its clear lakes, powerful rivers, and breathtaking mountains, our region inspires people. Many take advantage by creating niche businesses and activities. A perfect example of pure innovation is the Barn Door Hostel near world-renowned Rumney Rocks, which I visited with my ecotourism class. The owner, David Cook, saw a need for more affordable accommodations, which the hostel provides along with concerts and cool events. His passion for climbing and this region drove him as well.
The area walks the line between being developed enough to encourage visitors while also being undeveloped enough to create room for new and unique businesses.
When a region has as much life and beauty as New Hampshire, innovation just comes naturally. People see the potential and run with it. ■ Tara Sullivan ’28 is majoring in tourism & hospitality management
