We find people around us who are more innovative than us and make us wonder what makes them so. What brings all these new ideas in them which escape us? While pursuing our education, we find some exceptional students are doing the same thing that others are doing but in a different way, making them the winner. Why is that so? What is remarkable in them? We sometimes say that they have other DNA structures than us. Yes, we call it Innovator’s DNA, but not precisely it refers to the biological DNA. It is the way they approach their work.
What makes the Innovators different?
We find that the Innovator entrepreneurs have something called creative intelligence. They work with four primary skills that are questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking. These are the backbone of their strategy. As each person has a unique biological DNA, individual studies considered great innovators have exceptional innovators’ DNA for generating breakthrough business ideas.
Skill 1: Associating: An innovator always tries to associate their ideas by gathering new information, understanding correctly, and collecting new ideas that help their brain store and recombine associations.
Skill 2: Questioning: The more you ask questions, the more you learn. The famous industrialist, Ratan Tata of Tata Group of Industry, quoted once “Question the unquestionable.” Ask “Why?”, “Why not?”, “What if?” and get all the answers. Accept the challenges and be prepared for any unwanted situations.
Skill 3: Observing: Innovators carefully observe the behavior of customers, other companies, or anybody they need to deal with for their work to get insights about new ways of doing things. Like the Tata group has invented Nano, the cheapest car after observing the plight of a family of four to fit them in a single motorized scooter.
Skill 4: Experimenting: For innovators, experimenting does not mean going to the laboratory and doing scientific experiments, but they launch a new idea and get the reaction or feedback from the market and then decide the future of their launch. The Amazon Kindle was an experiment at first, and now it has given Amazon a whole new dimension to explore. It has transformed Amazon from an online retailer to an innovative electronic manufacturer.
Skill 5: Networking: Taking time to test ideas through a network of diverse individuals helps the innovators get a different perspective. The innovators come out of their domain, meet new people, and get their ideas to enrich their knowledge domain. This outreach helps to bring creative and more innovative ideas to apply and strengthen their skills.
So Innovator’s DNA is not a biological or genetic specialty, but we need to practice and develop the skills by ourselves. If we want to be different, then we need to think differently. At last, let us quote Shiv Khera – “Winners don’t do different things, but they do things differently.”