Key Practices of Leading Innovators

Monday, January 11, 2010

By: Emerge Leadership Group

Successful innovators aren't necessarily born, they are developed through practicing key skills that lead to their success.

According to BYU professor, Jeffrey Dyer, 

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, innovation isn’t a genetic endowment magically given to some and not others; it’s a set of skills that can be developed with practice,” Dyer says. “If you want to be one of the really successful people that make a mark in business, you want to be the person that comes up with the idea, not just the person who carries out others’ ideas."

In a 6-year study conducted in partnership with Harvard Business School and INSEAD, Dyer discovered that successful innovators consistently practice 5 key skills that lead to their success... unlike the rest of us who more frequently implement or carry out the ideas of others.

Below are the 5 skills discovered:

Questioning

“It became clear early on that these folks asked a lot more questions than your typical executive,” Dyer said. “Especially questions that challenge the status quo.”

• Write 10 questions each day that challenge assumptions in your company or industry. Asking “why?” “why not?” and “what if?” spur creative thinking. Embrace constraints. For example, ask, “If we were legally barred from doing things the way we do them now, what would we do?”

Observing

“But if you just sit in your room and question all day, you are not going to start an innovative business,” says Dyer, who chairs the Marriott School’s Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy. “There’s an action-oriented attitude that is captured in observing and these other skills.”

• Watch people, especially potential customers. Watch how customers experience a product or service in their natural environment. Focus on what’s different than you expected.

Experiment

• Seek training outside your expertise. Take apart a product or process just to see how it works.

Networking

“Rather than network to gain access to resources or to market yourself, connect with others simply to find and test new ideas. This will widen your perspective,” Dyer says.

• Contact the five most creative people you know and ask them to share what they do to stimulate creative thinking. Go to conferences that include people from outside your industry.

Associating

• Connecting seemingly unrelated questions and ideas is the skill that brings all the others together, Dyer explains. But associating is triggered by new knowledge that is acquired through questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking.
  

For the full article click here.

 

At Emerge Leadership Group we find these skills and practices most interesting.  Indeed, the proprietary research we conduct shows very similar things among successful leaders and leaders-of-leaders.  Indeed, ELG research has identified the "5 Key Accountabilities of Leadership."™ Of our 5 Accountaibilities, 3 of them map directly onto Dyers practices, with the other each representing combinations of our other Accountaibilties. 

If you would like to learn more about how Emerge Leadership Group can assist you or your organization in developing leadership potential and/or innovation, please contact us to setup a conversation at your convenience.

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