LEADERSHIP: WHAT’S YOUR INNOVATION INDEX

Published: 2010-04-15   please add a comment below

The authors of an article in the December issue of Harvard Business Review assert that “five ‘discovery skills’ separate true innovators from the rest of us.” They list the usual suspects: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Ratan Tata. And, as usual, it’s more about after-the-event generalisations than scientific deduction. But, that doesn’t stop us asking: what must I do to be more creative? Here are their five thoughts – and one I’ve added.

The authors’ “discovery skills” are as follows:

1. ASSOCIATE: connect unrelated questions, problems or ideas. And, to energise this, seek diverse experiences and training, so you have the input for lateral connections. Steve Jobs is exemplified here as having been exposed to “the art of calligraphy, meditation practices in an Indian ashram and the fine details of a Mercedes-Benz.”
2. DISCOVER: act on Peter Drucker’s advice to find the right question rather than the right answer. Or, as Ratan Tata puts it: question the unquestionable. Also, the authors suggest you imagine opposites and embrace constraints – with the latter illustrated by a Google innovation principle: creativity loves constraints. Or more traditionally: necessity is the mother of invention.
3. OBSERVE: scrutinise customers, for example, seeing what they struggle with – and how you could improve their experience. Open your eyes to the world around you.
4. EXPERIMENT: tinker physically, explore intellectually and engage in new surroundings. Thomas Edison’s well-known saying (“I haven’t failed. I’ve simply found 10,000 ways that do not work”) is repeated for the 10,000th time!
5. NETWORK: go out of your way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives. And the authors suggest attending Davos and similar forums – which is obviously fine, once your great ideas have started to fill the piggy bank.

As you can see, I’ve become cynical as I’ve progressed through their five actions. Is it perhaps just one idea repeated five times: do whatever it takes to drive lateral thinking?

But, more importantly, I’d add this: innovation is a long and lonely task. To make it work, you need a thick skin and probably a significant streak of attention-seeking. These result from upbringing not education. Let me put it this way: what’s the secret sauce that makes a business innovator (rather than another Californian hippy dilettante) out of an interest in calligraphy, meditation and motor mechanics? I think the authors still have further to go. In the meantime, support those on your team, who have the quirks as well as the questions.

Dr. Timothy Pascoe AM
PhD (Cambridge), MBA (Harvard), BE & BEc (Adelaide)
Creator, V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership^®