From Harvard Business Review editor’s blog (via Rajesh Jain):
Fryer: You conducted a six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study you found five “discovery skills” that distinguish them. What are these skills?
Dyer: The first skill is what we call “associating.” It’s a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. The second skill is questioning — an ability to ask “what if”, “why”, and “why not” questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture. The third is the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior. Another skill is the ability to experiment — the people we studied are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds. And finally, they are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.
Fryer: Which of these skills do you think is the most important?
Dyer: We’ve found that questioning turbo-charges observing, experimenting, and networking, but questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others. Overall, associating is the key skill because new ideas aren’t created without connecting problems or ideas in ways that they haven’t been connected before. The other behaviors are inputs that trigger associating — so they are a means of getting to a creative end.
Gregersen: You might summarize all of the skills we’ve noted in one word: “inquisitiveness.” I spent 20 years studying great global leaders, and that was the big common denominator. It’s the same kind of inquisitiveness you see in small children.
Fryer: How else do you think the innovative entrepreneurs you studied differ from average executives?
Dyer: We asked all the executives in our study to tell us about how they came up with a strategic or innovative idea. That one was easy for the creative executives, but surprisingly difficult for the more traditional ones. Interestingly, all the innovative entrepreneurs also talked about being triggered, or having what you might call “eureka” moments. In describing how they came up with a product or business idea, they would use phrases like “I saw someone doing this, or I overheard someone say that, and that’s when it hit me.”
I can identify with the aha moments triggering big innovative ideas. I can remember exactly when and where I have those ideas. They ienvitably happen to me while talking with others, not when I am alone (though the thoughts get refined while I reflect on them alone). Most often they are triggered by ideas from totally unrelated areas and contexts. That is where asscoicating kicks in. I call it connecting the dots. That is the quality that people like Stve Jobs and Jeff Bezos have that many others do not.
So here is the short, one sentence answer to how innovators think : ’they can connect the dots much much better than others’.
That is how I view my job description as the CEO of my startup. See the big picture, connects the dots, and make it rain.