Sometimes new perspectives are the best way for innovation to thrive. People who see the world differently are often most adept at changing it. In the case of Louis Braille (1809-1852), he actually didn’t see the world at all – he was blind. Sadly, at age three Braille stabbed one of his eyes with a knife and through sympathetic ophthalmia he then lost his sight completely. Fortunately he was very bright and didn’t let his unfortunate reality be a dampener on his life. He became adept at playing the organ and cello and even received a scholarship to an institution for the blind when he was ten years old. This institution was founded by a man named Valentin Hauy, who thought the blind could potentially read by feeling instead of seeing. His perspective was that of one who could see, so he simply raised written language off the page to make it feelable instead of merely seeable. This method had problems. A sixteen-year-old Louis Braille had a different perspective and found a system that worked better for the blind community. His new system consisted of six raised dots that could be combined in many different ways to form letters and words. His new method was revolutionary but not an instant success. After presenting the idea to his principal, it took twenty-five years before Hauy Institution officially adopted it. Twenty-six years after Braille’s death, it was adopted by an international congress in Paris. Usually innovations are improved over time – especially innovations from the past. In this case, 200 years later, the blind community still uses Braille’s genius system today. We call it “Braille.” Daniel J. Boorstin in his book The Discoverers, calls Louis Braille the “Gutenberg of the blind.”