THE INNOVATORS DNA

Florent BOURRELY Bndicte GAIDE Kieran OLEARY

INTRODUCTION

Based on the results of a 6-year survey on over 3,000 executives and 500 corporate innovators. Aims to answer two questions of crucial importance to organizational management:
How can I find innovative people? y How can I become more innovative myself?
y

An essential finding of the survey is the 5 key skills that make innovative people not only think differently but also act differently in a corporate environment, and constitutes their DNA.

SKILL N1 : ASSOCIATING
Creativity is connecting things, Steve Jobs

The ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions and problems from different fields. The capacity to associate is linked with the number of connections the brain makes, based on knowledge and past experience. The most innovative companies rose from the ability of their founders to make the connection between various facts and observations: the example of Pierre Omidyar.

SKILL N2 : QUESTIONING
The important and difficult job is never to find the right answers, it is to find the right question, Peter Drucker

A strong need for challenging interrogations

They help the innovative process and shake the status quo. Ask why?, why not?, what if?

Nothing can be taken for granted

It is better to challenge assumptions rather than trying to improve existing processes.

Going the opposite direction

Innovators have the ability to synthesize and put together radically opposed ideas.

SKILL N3 : OBSERVING
Going to the spot and seeing for yourself, Akio Toyoda

Observe

Family, friends Potential customers

Identify the obstacle

Four people packed on a scooter Someone strugglin g with his finance

A Solution

SKILL N4 : EXPERIMENTING
o

There are many experimental areas

Physical: chemistry, human tests  Intellectual: equations  Geographical: living in different places (CEOs who have lived in different countries achieve better results on average), trying to expand an idea abroad


Fail to succeed
Innovative people use failure as a way to learn  Failure isnt a drama, just a step toward success


It is essential to live in an environment that tolerates failure and encourages experimentation

SKILL N5 : NETWORKING
o

From diversity comes creativity

Networking isnt just about trying to sell yourself, your product or your company Its about sharing with people from different fields to take the best of them.

Work on a daily basis

Networking is an everyday occupation: o Attending conferences (TED) o Going to meet people with different perspectives, opinions..

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE !

These five key skills might be innate to some but they can also be acquired via the rehearsal of the previously described behaviors:
Questioning can be improved by spending 15 to 30 minutes every day listing unthought of questions. Why? Why not? What if? Seek to observe how customers naturally use and experience daily products and how they could be made more practical. Getting rid of personal judgements

Questioning Observing Experimenting

Diversify your sources of knowledge and experiences: attend seminars...

Networking

Contact the 5 most innovative people you know and make one of them your networking guru, diversify your acquaintances.

KEY FINDINGS

There are two drivers of the innovators capacity to make history:

They refuse the status quo in their organization y They are willing to take risks in order to make a change
y

There are 5 key skills that constitute the DNA of true innovators and make them both think and act different from the rest. Those key skills can be acquired by constant exercizing: training yourself every day to ask unusual and challenging questions and to think out of the box.