Innovation by Example

I saw this on the web. It's a simple way to talk about the traits of innovation researched by credible folks. Seems easy enough. I use this word a lot and see it everyday.

The ability to be innovative seems to go along with confidence, comfort with risk taking, support somewhere, an opportunity to try things out and test drive the idea, good failure analysis and ability to collaborate with others.

It would really be good if we could catalog the most innovative community efforts and use them as reference points. We could develop some tip sheets which would give people key principles of practice and good examples.

Professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs, that included interviews with high-profile entrepreneurs including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers.

In an article published in December's Harvard Business Review the researchers identified five skills that separate the blue-sky innovators from the rest -- skills they labeled associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and discovering.

Five Keys to Innovation (click to see article)

Researchers say they have identified five skills that drive innovation:

Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask "why?", "why not?" and "what if?"

Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.

Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.

Networking: innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives.