Hiring: 5 Tips to Find True Innovators

It's not just a matter of finding creative dreamers; you need people who can turn ideas into money. Here's what to look for.

Flickr/OnInnovation

Walking through Times Square recently, I came upon a hot dog vendor promising something astounding. On the side of his cart hung a giant sign advertising "Hot dogs with an innovative new design!!!!" 

Since I work in innovation--and am a huge fan of all things carnivorous--I had to check out this miracle of modern gastronomy. 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the "innovative new design" consisted of three elements: a bun, a cylindrical serving of meat (i.e, a hot dog) and Heinz ketchup. 

Convinced the subtle nuance of his artistry must have blown right by me, I quizzed the chef about the innovative nature of the design (I let the "new" part slide because I assumed it was just marketing). 

He stopped working, looked me right in the eyes, and absolutely beamed when he revealed his mysterious secret: His hot dogs came with the ketchup so you didn't have to ask for it. 

And right at that moment, I realized just how troubling the innovation craze has become. The idea of innovation is popping up everywhere. On everything. And as this beef-peddling savant demonstrated so eloquently, it can mean virtually anything. 

For a company whose entire business pivots on innovation, this poses two problems. First, we run the risk of being lumped together with a wide range of "innovation firms" selling the strategic equivalent of snake oil for clients desperately in need of something new. 

And second, we get bombarded with résumés all claiming to have rich innovation experience. In fact, in the last year alone, we received 4,000 resumes for just 10 positions. While some applicants clearly had experience creating products, businesses, and services that delivered groundbreaking utility, others bore a striking resemblance to the Ferran Adrià of dirty-water dogs I met on 47^th street. 

Sifting though applicants over the past five years has helped us figure out how to spot a genius within the genus. Hopefully, the lessons we've learned will be useful for other firms looking to hire true innovators.   

The Keys to Hiring Effective Innovators 

Our hiring philosophy is guided by two truths about the pursuit of growth through innovation and the market gap that lies between them. 

The first is that there is no shareholder value in a brilliant growth strategy without the creative synthesis of tangible, compelling offerings to commercialize it.

The second is the converse--that creative pipe-dreaming disconnected from commercial realities isn't worth much more than an inspiring afternoon. 

We are on a mission to bridge this gap by bringing together historically isolated capabilities: potent commercial strategy and inspiring creativity. Or, in our parlance, the Money and the Magic. 

Central to our ambition is being able to consistently attract a unique group of people who are walking embodiments of this balance. To find them, we look for people who possess five key characteristics: 

1. Intellectually Restless:

Great innovators get a thrill out of defining a bold vision and then wrestling with the data, insights, barriers, and opportunities to unlock what needs to be true to get there.

2. Inspiring Rather Than Convincing:

Applicants who come from traditional consulting are often proficient at framing opportunities, yet unaccustomed to creating outcomes. We want people who can do both. Those who recognize that innovation, by its very nature, is at odds with certainty. Breakthroughs can't be proven. They need to be envisioned and driven.

3. Proven Ability to Drive Innovation:

There's a big difference between recognizing a great innovation and understanding how to create a great innovation. Unlike financial markets, past performance in innovation is, more often than not, an indicator of future performance.

4. Have Scaled a Peak:

We look for greatness in some aspect of an applicant's life: successful entrepreneur, published writer, Ivy League graduate, Division I athlete, etc. The metric of success is less important than the success itself. We want people who are comfortable defining a high-order goal and then doing what it takes to accomplish it.

5. Willing to Commit to Something Bigger Than Themselves:

 This is important on two levels. At a firm level, we want people who are excited by the belief that we're on a mission to create a fundamentally new type of business. On a personal level, we want talent who believes in something that doesn't exist today. This type of belief is the core of innovation. Therefore, we look for candidates who've already demonstrated their commitment to a higher-order ambition. It can be sports, religion, a philosophy, or a charity. The object of devotion is much less important than the proven willingness to invest passionately with a group of people to realize a dream. 

It's tough to find people who possess all five characteristics. But when you do, you've found something special. And although it's a big call, I would argue... even more special than pre-loaded ketchup. 

Pete Maulik is Chief Strategy Officer at Fahrenheit 212, an innovation consultancy engaged to deliver top-line growth. @Fahrenheit212

via inc.com

 

Crush the "I'm Not Creative" Barrier - Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen

Did you know that if you think you are creative, you're more likely to actually be creative? This surprising fact pops up again and again in our research. In our database of over 6,000 professionals who have taken the Innovator's DNA self & 360 assessments, people (entrepreneurs and managers alike) who "agree" with the survey statement "I am creative" consistently deliver disruptive solutions — by creating new businesses, products, services, and processes that no one has done before. They see themselves as creative and act that way.

But what if you don't see yourself as creative? Are you actually less creative?

This is an important question to ask because many — probably half — of you don't think that you're creative. Around the world we regularly ask groups of 100 to 1,000 managers and executives, "Are you creative?" With clockwork consistency, at best half the hands in an audience slowly rise. This is not exactly a scientific sample and methodology, but it's direct enough data to see that most managers don't define themselves as creative (and for what it's worth, asking the more socially acceptable "Are you innovative?" question delivers an equally anemic response).

The bad news is that if you don't think you're creative, our survey data say that you probably are not. But there is good news: You can actually become more creative by changing your mind-set. Anyone can innovate, if they choose to. Disruptive innovators do it by choice, not chance. Their everyday actions swap out an "I'm not creative" mind-set for an "I am creative" one. And then magical (not mystical) things unfold.

The magic materializes as people engage unique innovation skills (what we call their innovator's DNA) on an everyday basis. For example, by asking provocative questions, observing like anthropologists, networking with people who see the world in 180-degree opposites, and experimenting with intensity, innovators obliterate the "I'm not creative" brain barrier and, more often than not, break out from the pack.

Stepan Pachikov, founder of Evernote (personal software that retrieves any kind of information whenever you need it), leveraged his innovator's DNA to put together a product with one of the most loyal followings around. From start to finish, Pachikov was obsessed with a single question: "What kind of database will help me remember things?" He took this simple question and did something with it, not only for himself but for millions of others. He observed first-hand how people actually try to remember things. He talked to a host of folks taking different angles on the problem of memory (finding what you want when you want it). He rapidly prototyped the software to make it work.

The result? A product that changes lives by enabling forgetful people to remember things they never could before. Yes, it does change lives. Whenever we mention Evernote to audiences, at least 20% of the Evernote users in the group affirm with real emotion that it really has changed their lives. By leveraging his personal portfolio of innovation skills, Pachikov collaborated with colleagues at Evernote, including CEO Phil Liblin, to build a hit product that makes a powerful, positive impact.

If you think your innovation efforts might be blocked by an "I'm not creative" brain barrier, take this fast, five-question diagnostic test (pulled from our 60-item assessment, which captures the innovator's DNA skills in far more depth), or pass it along to someone who seems stuck in a creative rut. Do you agree with the following statements? A simple yes or no works fine for each one.

Associational thinking: I creatively solve challenging problems by drawing on diverse ideas or knowledge.

Questioning: I often ask questions that challenge others' fundamental assumptions.

Observing: I get innovative ideas by directly observing how people interact with products and services.

Idea Networking: I regularly talk with a diverse set of people (e.g., from different functions, industries, geographies) to find and refine new business ideas.

Experimenting: I frequently experiment to create new ways of doing things.

If you answered no to three or more questions, then you're probably bumping into the "I'm not creative" barrier.

Becoming more creative requires acting more creative — on a daily basis — to conquer the most vexing problems you face, personally or professionally. It sounds deceptively simple, but acting and thinking differently actually makes us different. You must hunt for things to change. You must spend time at it — a lot more time. The problem is if you don't think you can, you won't. Remember that old saying: "Whether you think you can or think you can't, either way you're probably right." As we come to define ourselves as creative, we change our behaviors and we can actually become more creative. Doing this is key to keeping a creative edge, or for getting it back. via blogs.hbr.org

Consulting, Speaking & Coaching. Driving Growth through Innovation 

Innothink Group is a strategic management and innovation consultancy. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting over a third of our fees at risk subject o hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships.

 

For speaking, coaching or consulting inquiries contact:  

Email: CEO Jim Woods

Call: +1 719- 649-4118

 

To Innovate, Turn Your Pecking Order Upside Down - Chris Trimble

Here's an uncomfortable truth about innovation: No matter how great your idea, you can't deliver breakthrough innovation without breakthrough organizational design. Some companies are great at finding opportunities, diagnosing what customers want, and even designing the perfect offerings to satisfy them. But even if you get all of that right, your effort will fall apart if you build the wrong team to execute.

Most companies take the team building step far too casually. To build the right kind of team, for any breakthrough innovation effort, you have to think, quite literally, as though you are building a new company from scratch. You have to discharge all of your company's rarely challenged assumptions about how the work gets done and by whom. Rather than throwing a team together based on who is most readily available, you have to build a team that is custom-designed for the task at hand. This may mean inventing new jobs, hiring new kinds of experts from the outside, and rethinking hierarchy. Talk to us about our 28 day program to strengthen your innovation capabilities to drive growth.

This last piece — rethinking hierarchy — is both the most important and the most discomfiting step. Most companies have a "power alley" — a function that is the most dominant. These power alleys tend to be very stable, but the hierarchy often needs to be upended within teams built for innovation projects.

For example, consider the publishing industry and its fraught transition to the digital world. The companies that made the transition most gracefully are those that created special teams in which the hierarchy was literally turned upside down. Instead of keeping writers and editors at the top of the pecking order and IT specialists somewhere near the bottom, they created special teams in which internet experts were heavily empowered or even dominant. A crucial turning point early in the evolution of New York Times Digital, the internet unit of the New York Times Company, was an explicit decision to recruit and empower a small army of internet experts: Three out of four New York Times Digital employees had been hired from outside the company.

When Electrolux, the European appliance maker, decided that it needed to push its product line up market, it faced a similar organizational challenge. The company had a reputation for high-reliability, midpriced products that were a bit dull. To move up market, the company created a special team in which market researchers and industrial designers were at the top of the pecking order instead of engineers.

The rising phenomenon of reverse innovation — any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world — presents a similar challenge for many companies. To date, most companies have entered the developing world in a straightforward way. They have taken the products that they have made for home markets, put them in boxes, loaded them on ships, and sent them off to be sold abroad.

That approach has delivered some growth at the top of the market, where customers look similar to those at home. However, it leaves the bulk of the opportunity on the table. Customers in the developing world have different needs — not slightly different, but massively different. You can't win by making light adaptations to existing products and services. You have to innovate from scratch.

Reverse innovation is going to be particularly difficult for those companies in which the most dominant function is technology, product development, or engineering. In most cases, these companies will need to create special teams that deliberately shift power from those who understand technology to those who understand what customers want, because success at reverse innovation is more dependent on the latter. When Deere & Company initiated the development of a tractor from the ground up for India's middle market, for example, it created a team that was far more heavily staffed with market researchers than had been the case in the company's earlier forays into India. As a result, the design anticipated the unexpected ways tractors are used in India — for family transportation, for example.

The main point of this post is that any breakthrough innovation, reverse or otherwise, requires special teams that are custom-built from scratch. When building such a team, be sure to:

• Start hiring by asking What skills do we need?, not Who do we know? or Who is available?

• Create custom titles and job descriptions, tailored to the task at hand.

• Deliberately shift the power structure, as the task at hand requires.

Breakthrough innovation is not just about ideas. It's about getting unfamiliar work done, and unfamiliar work requires unfamiliar teams. via blogs.hbr.org

Consulting, Speaking & Coaching. Driving Growth through Innovation 

Innothink Group is a strategic management and innovation consultancy. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting over a third of our fees at risk subject o hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships.

 

For speaking, coaching or consulting inquiries contact:

 

CEO Jim Woods

+1 719- 649-4118