“I don’t want to overstate the case. I think about 40 percent of people just are not going to be good at innovating regardless of what they do. And 5 percent are born with the instinct.” — Clayton M. Christensen, professor, HBS

So a group of HBS profs with different expertise got together to identify what they call “The Innovator’s DNA” so the other 55% could learn to be innovators.

First they identified five primary skills: associating, observing, questioning, networking, and experimenting.

• First and foremost, innovators are good at associational thinking, or simply associating. They make connections between seemingly unrelated problems and ideas and synthesize new ideas.
• Innovators observe things, then question why.
• Networking is a skill that innovators use to identify and develop ideas by spending time with a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and experiences.
• Finally, innovators are constantly experimenting.

There’s a lot more in the article, but I want to focus on the 40%, because I can just hear all the managers and entrepreneurs saying to themselves, “Whoa; I’m not going to hire any of those 40% people,” Or words to that effect.

And that is just plain stupid.

First of all, that would make 55% of the population unemployable.

More importantly, you need both on your team to truly succeed.

But that still isn’t my point today.

Please take as a given that you need both on your team to truly succeed (if you think it through you’ll understand why).

Now pay attention, because here’s the point I want to drive home.

You cannot run your organization with 100% innovators.

There are dozens of critical jobs in every organization that need the skills of the 40%.

Those positions require a focus on what is, not what might be.

With all the focus on innovation, the 40% is getting short shift. In fact, I know many who left jobs/teams/bosses they loved, because they no longer felt valued; they knew they weren’t innovators, so they stopped believing they could contribute and left.

Only a few of those bosses ever understood they were the cause.

Image credit: raja4u

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2012 at 1:15 am and is filed under Innovation, Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: culture of innovation, innovate, management approach, retain
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