Are You an Innovator?

Asking if you are an innovator is one way of framing the question.  But the better question to ask, which really gets to the crux of the issue is, do you possess the character traits of an innovator?  Well obviously the next question begs to ask, What are the character traits needed to navigate the sea of change towards the shores of innovation?

Well according to Tom Kelley, the general manager of IDEO, the worlds's leading design consultancy specializing in product development and innovation (they are the ones who first brought us the Apple mouse and the Palm hand-held and hundreds of other cutting edge products and services) tells us in their book The Ten Faces of Innovation that there are ten personas necessary for innovation.  Those ten personas are broken up into three categories:

1.  The Learning Personas

2.  The Organizing Personas

3.  The Building Personas.

This approach, as Tom Kelley mentions in his book, highlights ten people-centric tools developed at IDEO for the success of creative problem solving that could eventually lead to groundbreaking ideas. These are personality traits needed by individuals and by teams of people to successfully orient yourself in a way that allows you to see the possibilities with new eyes and with a fresh perspective and allow you the ability to execute with efficiency the desired outcomes you would most like.  

The ideas in the book are not the end all be all in the world of creative problem solving.  What is does do is lay down an excellent foundation for which an entrepreneur, small business, or a large organization can begin to use as an initial guide for developing or seeking out the talent that can help serve as a guide to being leading edge industry thinkers and doers in today's extremely competitive marketplace.

What I personally like about the ideas that Tom Kelley puts forth is that his premise is about how to engage - and do it well.  How to re-imagine and re-define.  And how to disassemble and then reconstruct your "business DNA" so that your perceptions and understandings of the market allow you to have unique insights in your respective fields - which is invaluable.    

As you read over the next few days the 10 personas, it is important to keep in mind that these are not inherent personality traits.  They are able to be studied, learned and acquired - with the potential to lead you down roads of ingenuity, creativity, and hopefully to the endgame of - innovation.

Stay tuned. . .