Seven Habits of Highly Innovative People

On Innovation Zen, Think Simply Now’s list of 7 Habits of Highly Innovative People is summarized as:

1. Persistence
2. Remove Self-Limiting Inhibitions
3. Take Risks, Make Mistakes
4. Escape
5. Writing Things Down
6. Find Patterns & Create Combinations
7. Curiosity

To be frank, I don’t really like this list. It seems a bit trite for my taste and doesn’t resonant with my own observations.  Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to criticize the Think Simply Now list with out offering an alternative view.  So, here is my list of seven key characteristics of highly innovative people.

Learn from everything
Innovation isn’t about the lone genius coming up with a brilliant idea on his own.  Innovation is about synthesis and connection.  The brilliance comes when one has the insight to connect the dots and see how to build upon experience to create something new.  Innovative people instinctively understand this and place high value on accumulating and internalizing the knowledge that is the catalyst of creative insight.  They learn from their experiences and seek out knowledge to complement that experience.

Understand the problem
There is no such thing as proactive innovation.  Innovation is a response.  Understanding what you are responding to is the first and most crucial step to focusing your innovation adventures.  How many people can you point to who try really hard but fail in the end because they didn’t understand the nature of the problems they we facing?  This is an all too common issue.  If you want to improve your chances of success, begin by understanding your goal.  Highly innovative people do this naturally.

Share the problem
No man is an island.  This is as true for innovation as any other arena of human endeavor.  Just as great innovators will collect knowledge, so to do they tap into the insights of others.  Understanding different viewpoints and alternative solution concepts yields deeper insight and will lead to better solutions.

Listen to the voice of the crowd, then go the other way
Highly innovative people are suspicious of the so called wisdom of the crowd.  They understand that the crowd has no collective vision and is driven by stimuli that are rarely aligned with the innovation goals.  The highly innovative person is not afraid to break away from the pack and chart a new course.  Innovators are leaders, and that means taking people to places that they would not have gone on their own.

Accept nothing less than success
Some people like to say that to succeed at innovation you must embrace failure.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  I made this point in my post “For Successful Innovation, Don’t Embrace Failure”.  Highly innovative don’t give up and admit failure the first time they run into a problem.  They keep reworking their ideas until they reach success.  Only after they have doggedly and passionately pursued their idea and exhausted all possibilities do they reluctantly yield to defeat. 

Believe the impossible is possible
Highly innovative people believe in their ability to do what other can not.  Instead of the big challenge, they see the big opportunity.  This might at first sound like a bit of feel-good motivation speak.  But, there is a very real truth here.  Every great innovation contains a really hard challenge.  If you don’t believe, you won’t achieve.

Practice innovation in everything
Being highly innovative is more that just something you do; it is a way of life.  Highly innovative people are always on when it comes to innovation.  They don’t save their innovation mindset for the big challenges; they view all challenges through the same innovation lens.  By regularly flexing their innovation muscles, they are ready when faced by the big challenges.  Great high-performance innovation organizations are the same way.  Sustainable innovation practice is weaved into their daily operations.

What’s on your list?

Comments

[Tina Su – Think Simple Now]

Thank you for mentioning me here. I appreciate the link.

Love & Gratitude,
Tina
Think Simple Now. ~ Clarity & Happiness

[Jim Belfiore]

My list? One entry might seem to disagree with you, Jim:

"Fail better than anyone else, or don't bother."

I often tell my students and project teams that "Failure is not just an option, Failure is essential." In a larger context, it takes many ideas to arrive at one that leads to a successful product in the marketplace. (A survey in the August 2003 issue of The Economist placed this ratio at around 3000:1.) That means we must acknowledge that our first ideas may not be winners, but consistent and repeatable innovation processes will win the game *every* time.

Another entry on my list:

"Practice 5-minute Innovation."

In my experience, all truly innovative ideas cross the threshold from seemingly impossible conundrum to simple brilliance in about 5 minutes. The trick is, the road of the impossible conundrum is long and winding, and we may be stuck on it for days, months, or even years before we find that simple footbridge across to Innovation Way. Knowing when we're stuck on the road to nowhere is as much a part of the solution as actually thinking of the problem, something Seth Godin points to in "The Dip". Taking command of our own navigation and quitting the road to nowhere is a major first-step in achieving highly-effective innovation.

[Jim Belfiore]

I forgot to add one other (though I can't claim it as my own)...

"He who lives by the crystal ball, soon learns to eat ground glass." - Edgar Fiedler, Economist