This article is a tribute to the late Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen who passed away 23 January 2020. He was the pioneer of disruptive innovation and is best known for his book The Innovator’s Dilemma.
Being more creative and innovative will help us deal with the rapid changing environment such as the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is disrupting the way we are used to doing things. This holds true for companies as well as employees. Business owners and management need to make sure that their businesses are sustainable and will be around for years to come whilst employees need to make sure that they are employable even though artificial intelligence could be taking over their jobs. The alternative is to imagine where you or your business will be in ten years if you decide to remain the same in a changing world.
This article is based on The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen – this book is described as the ‘how to manual’ to innovation. The research showed that there are five primary discovery skills that innovative entrepreneurs and executives had in common when discovering breakthrough ideas. These innovators ‘think different’ in that they link unusual ideas together to produce original ideas. A critical insight from their study was that we can think different by acting different “one’s ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but is also a function of behaviors. This is good news for us all because it means that if we change our behaviors, we can improve our creative impact.” The actions, or discovery skills, that we consistently need to engage in to be more creative and innovative are association, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting.
The analogy of identical twins, as described in The Innovator’s DNA, illustrates the power of utilising these discovery skills. Imagine you and your identical twin have the same creative ability and have one week to come up with a creative business idea. You generate ideas on your own in your room whilst your twin is out there talking to people with different backgrounds, visiting innovative start-ups and observing what they do, sampling new products and taking them apart and showing a prototype to several people and asking questions such as “What if I tried this?” and “What would make this not work?” Who do you think will come up with the most innovative idea?
Associational thinking is a cognitive skill that sparks new ideas by connecting different or unusual concepts, ideas or disciplines. Steve Jobs described creativity as connecting things! The key catalyst to pursue and generate innovative ideas is by practicing associational thinking through frequently engaging in the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, networking and experimenting. Dyer et al argue that people who engage more in these discovery activities are willing to embrace change and to take risks to make things happen – they have the courage to innovate. More and diverse new knowledge is also likely to trigger more and new connections between ideas.
Ask thought provoking questions to understand what the status quo is (who, what, when, where, how). Ask why things are the way they are to understand the drivers, and ask why, why-not and what if questions to discover what might be possible. The Innovator’s DNA suggests using a process which they coined QuestionStorming. It is similar to brainstorming but focuses on brainstorming the questions and not the solution. After listing the questions, the most important and intriguing ones are prioritised and discussed. Dyer et al explain that collectively questions provoke new insights, connections, possibilities and directions.
Observing, or watching the world around you, can help you generate new insights and ideas to find new ways of doing things. Observing is more than just looking – it is all the senses we use to experience the world. Watch people as they use products or services and ask questions to find out what job it is that they really want to get done e.g. do they just want to drink a cup of coffee or do they want the Italian coffee bar experience with comfort, community and a sense of extended family? Putting yourself in a new environment is also likely to stimulate new ideas as we are more likely to carefully observe what is going on around us. The research conducted by Dyer et al showed that innovators were more likely to visit new environments and interesting places.
Idea networking is actively extending your knowledge and searching for new ideas by meeting and talking to people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. The Innovator’s DNA explains that idea networking is about building bridges into different areas of knowledge with people whom you normally would not interact with. You have to look for insights from unusual places – meet with people from different cultures, ages, educational backgrounds etc. Understanding how people in other industries solved problems similar to what you are experiencing may help you find solutions that may be relevant to you.
Experimenting and prototyping will provide you with key data on how well your idea works in practice and what needs to be changed. Jeff Bezos from Amazon said that experiments are the key to innovation as they seldom turn out as expected! He encourages his employees to “go down blind alleys and experiment”. Try to reduce the cost of your experiments so that you can have more experiments which are likely to result in more innovations. Constantly try out new experiences and pilot new ideas. The Innovator’s DNA recommends that you visit new places, try new things, seek new information and experiment to learn new things.
The Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling said that the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas! You need to obtain more knowledge, experience and ideas from a wide range of diverse sources to generate a variety of innovative ideas. Edward de Bono, the author of Lateral Thinking, warns that you cannot look in a new direction if you look too hard in the same direction. Making compelling observations, asking the right questions, networking with diverse people and experimenting with novel ideas will help you to generate more ideas that may be worthwhile pursuing.
References Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2011.
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