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On the flight from Toronto to Seoul I had a chance to read a Harvard Business Review back issue from December 2009. In it was a great article titled: The Innovator’s DNA. The article talked about the characteristics of great innovators – how they think. It boiled down to five key skills.

  1. Associating – the ability connect seemingly unrelated questions, ideas or problems from different fields. It is about finding the intersections of different disciplines.
  2. Questioning – innovators constantly ask questions. They question the unquestionable. They ask “what-if?, “Why?”, “Why not?” They get a kick out of messing with the status quo.
  3. Observing – scrutinizing everything from common phenomena to outliers. They watch, and in doing so, question, and associate.
  4. Experimenting – innovators experiment with ideas, intellectually, and in the real world. They go see for themselves, try new things, observe the outcomes.
  5. Networking – innovators devote time and energy testing ideas through a diverse network of individuals from different disciplines and backgrounds. They go out of their way to find radical opinions. They travel, visit people of different cultures and ways of thinking.

They practice, practice, practice and over time become confident in their creative skills. Innovators are willing to take risks. They want to make a difference in the world.

To read the full, original article click on this link: How Innovators Think « rajile

Author: rmudhar