My wife and I hate cooking. I know that is a strong statement but it’s
true. We cook but only because we need to survive and we have 3 kids and we
figured not feeding them would amount to child abuse. To solve the issue of
cooking bland meals we bought a book called 4
Ingredients. This enables busy families to make fairly decent meals quickly
and with only 4 ingredients.
What about busy leaders wanting the delicious
results of successful innovation? Are there only a few key ingredients or is it
more like a complex meal of surprising and at times delightful tastes and
aromas that amount to value added innovation? Can we whittle the key
ingredients down to a small number and ensure we have those at ready supply in
our organisation for a delicious meal? Through his research, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has
identified key characteristics or ingredients of successful innovators.
Ingredient 1: Innovators seem to have an opportunistic mindset
that helps them identify gaps
in the market. Some people are more alert to others when it comes to
opportunities. These opportunists according to Chamorro-Premuzic “are
genetically pre-wired for novelty:
they crave new and complex experiences and seek variety in all aspects of
life.”
Ingredient 2: We tend to think that
most innovators have dropped out of school and have little formal training.
This is not the case. They tend to be experts in their field and well-trained.
Because of this, they are able to “distinguish between relevant and irrelevant
information; between noise and signals.”
Ingredient 3: Innovators show high
levels of resilience, persistence and drive. They have the energy and passion
to enable them to take advantage of
the opportunities they identify.
Ingredient 4: Innovators understand
that connections and networks are vital to their success. Through these channels
they build alliance as and relationships that will help them bring their ideas
to light. Typically,
innovators have been portrayed as individual geniuses but in reality innovation
comes through the work of teams. Innovators tend to have higher EQ which
enables them to sell and communicate their ideas to others and the team.
Back to our kitchen. Unfortunately, we
continued to cook fairly bland meals. So order to have a tasty meal, now and
then we would invite a friend over who was a chef. His mission was to cook a
meal with the ingredients we had in our kitchen. That was quite a challenge since
there weren’t very many (especially when you only need 4 per meal!) The genius
of our chef friend was that he could combine the various foods we had into a
beautiful, rich and flavorsome meal. This highlighted the most important
ingredient of all for a great meal; a great chef. A leader in the kitchen.
True innovation
tends to only occur when leadership is present. By this I mean the ability to
ingrain innovation into the organizational culture. Furthermore, it is the
ability to create a long-term and meaningful vision that is inspirational and
purpose-driven. It propels people to action and excites them. The ability to move
people towards a (meaningful) mission is a key feature of leadership and an
innovative culture.
I emailed a
connection at Google to why it was that they innovated so much. He answered
that it was “expected. It’s just the way we are supposed to think when we walk
through those doors in the morning.” This moves beyond slogans on walls, coffee
cups T-shirts. It is ‘the way we do things around here.” The leader with the
ability to create an innovative and forward thinking culture can attract the
“right talent, build and empower teams” and they can, “ensure that you remain
innovative even after attaining success”.
While you need some
core ingredients to make a decent meal, what you really need is a great chef
who has the ability to put it all together into a delicious meal.
For more
information: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/the-five-characteristics-of-successful-innovators/
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