The Innovator’s DNA
By Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business Review Press, 296 pages, $29.95)
The ability of Steve Jobs to create so many dazzling, breakthrough electronic innovations would seem to spring from an unusually brilliant mind. But recent research into innovative entrepreneurs found that the ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but also a function of behaviours.
“This is good news for us all because it means that if we change our behaviours, we can improve our creative input,” Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen write in The Innovator’s DNA. The three authors are academics: Mr. Christensen is a well-known Harvard Business School professor who has opened our eyes to how disruptive innovation works in his previous books, while Professor Dyer teaches strategy at Utah’s Brigham Young University and Mr. Gregersen is a professor of leadership at INSEAD in France.
The authors interviewed nearly 100 inventors of revolutionary products and services, as well as founders and CEOs of game-changing companies built on innovative business ideas.
Among them, of course, was Mr. Jobs. He came up with the notion that personal computers could be quiet and small, in part because he had spent time learning Zen meditation, and found the noise of a computer too distracting. He asked why a computer needed a fan, and then set out to redesign the power supply to eliminate the noise.
The seed for the Macintosh’s breakthrough operating system came from a visit by Mr. Jobs to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in 1979, where he saw a computer with icons, pull-down menus and overlapping windows that the copier company didn’t know how to exploit. So he did.
He opened desktop publishing to the masses with the Macintosh and its LaserWriter printer. Part of its lure was the machine’s beautiful typography, which probably would not have been available if Mr. Jobs had not decided to drop in on a calligraphy class at Reed College in Portland, Ore., after having dropped out of his regular studies.
The authors note that these innovative ideas “didn’t spring fully formed from his head as if they were a gift from the Idea Fairy.” Instead, they came from behaviours, such as challenging the status quo with questions and making use of diverse experiences. These are part of the five traits that the authors found critical to disruptive innovation:
Associating
Innovators think differently, combining things in unexpected ways, to come up with revolutionary ideas. “The innovators we studied rarely invented something entirely new; they simply recombined the ideas they had collected in new ways, allowing them to offer something new to the market,” the authors note.
Questioning
Innovators are consummate questioners who show a passion for inquiry. They love to ask questions about why things are done in a certain way, and how that might be challenged and disrupted. The authors found that innovators consistently demonstrate a high question-to-answer ratio: Questions not only outnumber answers in a typical conversation, but also are valued at least as highly as the answers.
Observing
Innovators are intense observers, like anthropologists. They carefully watch customers, products, services, technologies and companies. They are alert, as Mr. Jobs was in his Xerox visit, to how to leap ahead.
Networking
Innovators spend a lot of time and energy testing ideas through a diverse network of individuals. The key is not that they have a wide social network; it is that they actively search for new ideas by talking to people who may offer a radically different view. At one point, it was suggested to Mr. Jobs that he visit “the crazy guys” working at Industrial Light & Magic. Mr. Jobs bought the computer graphics division of the company, renamed it Pixar, and eventually took it public for more than $1-billion (U.S.) – all as a result of a chance conversation and a willingness to meet people with wild ideas.
Experimenting
Innovators are continually trying out new experiences and piloting fresh ideas. “Experimenters unceasingly explore the world intellectually and experientially, holding convictions at bay and testing hypotheses along the way. They visit new places, try new things, seek new information, and experiment to learn new things,” the authors write. For Mr. Jobs, that included meditation and calligraphy.
When the authors studied innovative companies, they found the same five discovery skills at the heart of the culture, which they dubbed “innovator’s DNA.” It’s a catchy term but to some extent a misleading one, given that the authors believe these are skills we can learn and enhance, and their book contains helpful tips for doing so. The book is easy to read, jammed with examples and, at a time when innovation is a beacon, offers an interesting model to consider.
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POSTSCRIPT
Five behaviours common to innovators are found in entrepreneurial companies. But the authors of The Innovator’s DNA also found four philosophies permeating the world’s most innovative companies:
1. Innovation is everyone’s job, not just that of the R&D staff.
2. Disruptive innovation that establishes entire new markets is part of the company’s innovation portfolio, rather than confining innovation to small-scale improvements to products and services. Staff are given time to pursue such grand possibilities.
3. Small, properly organized, innovation project teams are deployed to carry a product or service idea from inception to market.
4. Smart risks are taken in pursuit of innovation; companies are willing to swing for the fences but also know they may fail early in their ventures and gain knowledge from such failures.
Special to The Globe and Mail
