Bidiversity

Identifying innovators in your organisation can unlock true competitive advantage. In this article, innovation guru Jeffrey Philips outlines the key attributes for the innovators in your business and ways to identify them. First published in the OVO Innovation newsletter.

Innovation Attributes

For many firms, innovation is a project or initiative that is tacked on to the “day job” of employees. The mandate comes down from on high that we need some new ideas for products and services, and a team is assigned to generate ideas. While we have some real concerns with the “tacked on” aspect of the work, today we’re going to focus on the individuals who are asked to innovate. Much like any other business skill set, innovation skills are widely distributed and unevenly distributed. And, in the case of innovation, good skills and capabilities matter a lot, since the work is different and requires new thinking and new perspectives. Merely assigning the people with the most bandwidth is usually a bad idea.

In the paragraphs below we’ll point out what attributes to look for when selecting people to build your innovation team. We’re willing to bet these aren’t the attributes you’d normally use to build a team!

Reset the corporate framing

Good innovators, inside your organization or outside, reject the established “framing” of the problem. Usually they are trying to completely reframe the problem or restate an opportunity. Remember Galileo? He was certain the original framing was wrong, convinced the earth rotated around the Sun. He tried to change the “framing” and sought to change the orthodoxy. You probably remember how that went. Individuals in your organization who try to “reframe” problems or opportunities are quite possibly good innovators. Often people with this proclivity are seen as avoiding the problem or enlarging the problem needlessly. From an innovation standpoint, this reframing is often exactly what’s needed.

Optimistic

Innovators are optimists. They have to be, since they fight against established hierarchies every day to promote their ideas. Pessimists focus far too much energy on the problems, while innovators acknowledge the challenges and view those as starting points or opportunities, not barriers. Additionally, good innovators are optimistic about solutions, not necessarily about specific ideas. That indicates the difference between cheerleaders and innovators. Because of their optimism, innovators believe the pie can be expanded and that the outcome is not a zero-sum game.

Future Oriented

Since innovators are optimists, they are interested in the future, and seek signals about the future. Many individuals in business look to the past for inspiration and guidance, but innovators understand that the future will be different and try to understand the future first. Too often innovators seem preoccupied with learning more about the future. It appears they don’t focus enough focus on the day to day issues and ignore historical information. Innovators buck the “standard” approach in many organizations because they seek new insights and information from trends rather than rely on historical data and past performance.

Solving “wicked” problems

I don’t know where this use of the word “wicked” entered the vernacular, but as shorthand it’s great. Real innovators are interested in solving difficult, challenging problems. If your team only pursues incremental ideas, they aren’t real innovators. Innovators are drawn to the difficult, wicked, challenging problems that most people avoid. Old problems or incremental challenges can be solved with existing tools and techniques. It’s only the new, difficult problems that require new ways of thinking and new skills, which is why those problems attract innovators.

Broadly Networked

Innovators interact with people and information that reaches well beyond their market, product or industry. Evidence shows that the best innovators actively engage with people and ideas outside their area of expertise. Ideas from one industry or market are often the catalyst for new concepts in another industry, and only individuals who engage outside of their market or technology can introduce those new concepts. People who have deep expertise in one field but do not network outside of their field are rarely as innovative as so called “T” shaped people who have deep skills AND broad networks.

Proactive

Once they’ve discovered a problem or opportunity, innovators don’t wait for permission, they start trying to create ideas to solve the problem. Innovators are inherently proactive and will bridle at being told to wait until the “appropriate” people are involved. Innovators are motivated to solve problems and are energized by generating ideas and evaluating options, and will do so almost automatically.

Most of the innovators we’ve known and worked with don’t wait for permission, they ask for forgiveness later.

Respects and Understands failure

Innovators understand that a problem is rarely solved in the first attempt or iteration, and are comfortable working within a cycle. They generate ideas, test ideas and discover which worked best and which failed. Then they attempt again, incorporating the knowledge from the previous failures and successes to make an event better solution. In this regard they are undeterred by failure, and view any failure as a step in discovering the best ideas.

Good Observers

Innovators are people who are very alert to challenges and opportunities and are excellent observers. They rely on traditional market research, but also have a very keen sense of why things are happening and are good at recognizing why specific behaviors happen. They use qualitative insights balanced with quantitative data to draw conclusions. Good innovators instinctively connect seemingly disparate information and create new insights.

Conclusion

If your firm wants to become more innovative, look around at the people on staff. How many of them reflect these attributes? Retain them and place them on the innovation effort. If, quite likely, you discover that very few people within your firm have these attributes, then you need to recruit people with these attributes to ensure the innovation effort within your organization is sustainable.

When you interview individuals for these roles, you need to gain these insights:

• Is the individual reactive or proactive?
• Oriented toward the past or the future?
• Comfortable in ambiguity?
• An optimist or a pessimist? Likely to quit at the first sign of failure?
• Willing to accept the company’s definition of the problem?
• Broadly networked or narrowly networked?
• Interested in the status quo or solving big problems?
• Willing to use qualitative insights and consumer behavior to drive new ideas?