Skills needed for you and your company to become innovative
Rafi Dudekula ,
08 / 26 / 2011 ,
innovation, success, skills
This week I had a chance to read the book The innovators DNA, mastering the five skills of disruptive innovators. I read many business books before, but almost always I felt the core message of most business books that are 250 pages long can be boiled down to say 7 pages. However Innovators DNA is different, it is full of practical and actionable information. If you are intrigued by those top few individuals or companies who consistently create exceptional products or solutions and would like to know how you can achieve similar results, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Here is a high level summary of what I got out of the book.
The book identifies five discovery skills to improve your Discovery quotient (DQ). They are associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting. Discovery quotient is designed to measure our ability to discover ideas for new ventures, products and processes. Delivery skills that are complementary to discovery ones are analyzing, planning, detail oriented and self disciplined. Most organizations that I have been a part of have placed emphasis on delivery skills. Challenging the status quo and taking smart risks are inherent characteristics of innovative people or organizations.
Organizations typically place a high premium on delivery skills and encourage it through inherent reward structures. However most just talk about innovation and are not committed to providing say 20-25% of employee time for researching and developing innovative solutions.
How can one systematically inculcate these skills until they become habits? The authors of Innovators DNA provide solid action plan to improve each of the associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting skills for you first and for your organization next.
Just as inventive people systematically engage in questioning, observing, networking and experimenting behaviors to spark new ideas, innovative organizations and teams systematically develop processes that encourage and develop these same skills in employees.
Here are a few questions that Innovators DNA has some good answers for:
- Associating: What is it? Where does it happen? How it works?
- Questioning: What tactics and types of questions can be effective?
- Observing: How to observe and identify surprises to discover customer needs?
- Networking: What idea networkers do? How to tap outside experts?
- Experimenting: What are some effective ways to experiment and try out new experiences?
If you read this far you may be interested in watching the following video:
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