The Habits of Innovators are NOT unique to the adult world.

In fact we were probably at the height of our Innovativeness when we were just Five Years Old.

Shed some of your adultness, shake off your pressures,

forget about tomorrow’s deadlines and inhabit the world of the Five Year Old

so you can create and invent fearlessly.

Think and Behave like a Five Year old.

By Angela Koch Delivered at MeciaCorp Innovation Blitz,

6 December 2011

The 9 Habits of Innovators

Habit 1: Discipline

Make Innovation Routine, Not Accidental

Like any ability we wish to master, a level of commitment and discipline is required. Serial Innovators make Innovation a Routine part of how they work, rather than relying on Accidental Innovation.

Habit 2: Sharing

Innovation Is A Team Sport

For ideas to germinate and for Innovation to happen we require Both a diverse set of perspectives and a mix of Thinkers and Doers.

“Enlightened trial & error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.”

Author Keith Sawyer says when collaboration works well it creates a kind of magical effect where the intelligence and creative outputs of the group are greater than the

sum of the individual outputs.

Habit 3: Observing

Innovators observe people in their everyday life

Become Students of Human Behaviour By simply keeping your eyes open and watching people go about the business of everyday life, new insights may help solve a persistent challenge.

Habit 4: Discovery

Innovators are curious about everything

“The real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but seeing with new eyes” - Marcel Proust

Habit 5: Passion Innovators are powered by

A Driving Purpose.

Habit 6: Questioning

Why Not

How might we

What If

Why ?

?

“The important and difficult job is never to find the right answers, It is to find the right question.”

- Peter Drucker

Habit 7: Associating

Combine seemingly unrelated things

Creativity happens when two things collide to create a new idea.

+ =

“to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk” -Thomas Edison

Habit 8: Networking

Want to Play?

“The insights required to solve many of our most challenging problems come from outside our industry and scientific field.” Kent Bowen

27

P&G are Open Innovation champions

Innovation is serious play

Habit 9: Experimenting

“I haven’t failed, … I’ve just found 10,000 ways that do not work”

- Edison

“Dance like nobody's watching; Love like you've never been hurt.

Sing like nobody's listening. Live like it's heaven on earth.”

Mark Twain~

Invent fearlessly, like the Five Year old you once were!