Are you an innovator? Chances are, you’ll reply NO quickly and emphatically. Innovators, you think, invent complicated things – like iPhones or driverless cars or drones. Or they toil for years to find that next big breakthrough in science, finding that previously unknown virus or a cure for a disease. Or you think innovation is about inventing things – rather than ideas, processes, and social advancement. And you probably think big: Madame Curie, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Jeff Bezos, and the like.
But I think each of us, as a member of the human species, has the potential to innovate. To find novel solutions to current problems. To find new ways to skin a cat (although I have no earthly idea why anyone would want to skin a cat).
The person that figured out how to fit two things into a small microwave is an innovator.
As is the person who figured out how to use a toilet paper roll to make an iPhone speaker.
In their book and HBR articles on The Innovator’s DNA, Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen list five “discovery” skills that innovative entrepreneurs have. They include:
- Associating: putting together disparate ideas – like toilet paper rolls, iPhones and speakers. Or, asking “How is thing #1 like thing #2?”, even though they seem to have absolutely nothing in common. Or how can we apply what we know about this phenomenon to a totally new setting?
- Questioning: asking provocative, interesting questions that open our thinking (rather than judge or close our minds). Questions like “What if?” or “If there were no limitations, what might we do?” or “What would it look like if…” or “Why not?”
- Observing: careful watching of humans and their behaviors, often at the micro-level. How do 6-year olds think about this? How do our eyes track across a screen? What shortcuts are others taking – and how might we capitalize on that? What problems are others encountering and how might we solve them?
- Experimenting: rather than science labs and white coats – think of tinkering, playing around, getting out of your comfort zone, trying new things – just to see what works, what doesn’t and what you learn.
- Networking: not with folks like you, but with folks NOT like you. At conferences, TED talks, universities, church, school, your neighborhood, other countries, other places.
I hope you can see the amplification effect of these elements. If you are networking with someone outside your normal circle and asking good questions and observing – you have ratcheted up your innovation potential. Ask great questions that force associations and then test them and observe what happens – VIOLA – a thought breakthrough.
If you’d like to grow and flex your innovation muscles, you might consider doing one or more of the following:
- Join a new group or association.
- Sponsor a foreign exchange student.
- Travel somewhere new.
- Sit in a public place (mall, park, airport) and just observe.
- Go to where your customers are and observe them use your product or service.
- Create a bank of good questions and ask one a day. (for a jumpstart go here)
- Learn a new skill.
- Create list of frustrations in your daily world and find 3 solutions for each. They don’t have to be doable or possible – just solutions.
- Start an idea journal – jot down ideas, thoughts and “what ifs.”
- Hang out with kids. Read kid’s books – like Suess and Shel Silverstein. Laugh. Giggle. Play.
I’d love to get our list to 50! What do you do to spark creativity and innovation?
2 Responses
Hang out with an old farmer. Not the gentleman kind, the ones that get their hands dirty everyday. I can’t even begin to tell you some of the things these guys come up with to get the job done.
Then there is that group of men that hang out in pole buildings from all walks of life. Doesn’t matter what type of pole building, just put 3 or 4 (or more) of them together with a little down time and there are problems being solved. Not sure what but they are on it. I’ve seen them stand and talk and stare at the ceiling. Heck you can even give them a problem if you want. They are usually drinking coffee. Stop and sit with them sometime. It’s mind expanding. My personal favorites are usually at the airport.
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All great suggestions for expanding, exercising your innovation skills — and yes, as usual Kris is right (or at least I agree with her) we all have some ‘innovation’ in us. #10 on Kris’s list is especially good — hang with kids. If you have a new idea, ask them what they think. Show them a drawing or mock up of it and see what they have to add (or subtract). Their creativity is not hampered by all this knowledge that adults have acquired. I would also add A.A. Milne to the list of authors — lots of life lessons from Winnie and Christopher and the gang.
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