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Innovator DNA—All or Nothing?

by Miki Saxon

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/6840799106/Monday I wrote how important it is to value all your people if you want to keep them, not just the “innovators” on your team.

I also listed the five prime traits of HBS defined “Innovator DNA”—associating, observing, questioning, networking, and experimenting—but what happens when an innovator doesn’t possess all five traits?

I am living proof that possessing one doesn’t mean possessing all.

I have the first three in spades, but lack the last two.

I know I excel in the first three, because those are the traits that my clients have raved about and tangibly rewarded over the years, but I was a specialist; hired to do specific tasks where the lack of the last two traits wasn’t a problem.

I don’t believe this is unusual.

I know many people who are superb at networking and discovering what people think or thrive on experimenting with an idea and trying out various versions, but can’t originate the concepts.

The question is how do you take advantage of the innovator traits people do have?

By teaming them correctly.

Much of my most innovative work is done with founders when working on their executive summaries.

I tend to associate what they are describing with things I’ve heard or read in other places and at other times and synthesize new uses or functions; plus I am totally a ‘why’ person, which annoys so many people, but the profs say it’s good—who knew.)

I often see relationships and usages the founders didn’t, but my hearing makes networking an exercise in frustration (on both sides) and I don’t have the skills and training required to validate the concepts in the field.

But that doesn’t change the value, because the founders and teams with which I work do have those skills.

Part of building a powerful team is the ability to take advantage of all the skills a candidate has and then filling in the team’s holes as needed.

Flickr image credit: AJ Cann

One Response to “Innovator DNA—All or Nothing?”
  1. MAPping Company Success Says:

    […] year I found that I possessed three of the five parts of Innovator DNA, based on a Harvard definition, but, after a lifetime of trying, am totally incapable of the final […]

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