Innovation is a Habit

Posted by Xiaoyan Sun at 10:35 AM

Many of us may have heard or read the book ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, but you may not know ‘Seven Habits of Highly Innovative People’. No, it’s not created by me. I hope so though. At the very end of this semester and inspired by the ideas shared in the class and here, I had the question: “Is innovation a talent or a habit?” I don’t think myself as a very creative person. Yet I am interested in getting more innovative thoughts. Being innovative, or creative, is always a desirable trait in personal life or future job, isn’t it? So I found this article on habits of highly innovative people:

It’s quite encouraging for me as I went through the list:

1. Persistence – Obviously this is my strength. I can run 5 miles or have a long whole-day hiking!
2. Remove Self-Limiting Inhibitions - Think out of the box and be open to new ideas and solutions without setting limiting beliefs. I can do this better in the future.
3. Take Risks, Make Mistakes – Yes, I need to take more risks. ‘Rather than treating the mistakes as failures, think of them as experiments.’
4. Escape – ‘Ideas sometimes come to us in the shower or while we’re alone’. I agree with this especially because most of the day my head is full of things to do but I don’t really spend enough time thinking about doing something fun and differently.
5. Writing Things Down – That’s why I have this post finally!
6. Find Patterns & Create Combinations – I think this is what we did in the past several months from the class.’ Ideas come from other ideas.’ I did get some ideas from those interesting innovations presented by our classmates. Thanks a lot to you all.
7. Curiosity – This is a very important attribute of a marketer or marketing researcher, I believe.

‘Innovation is more about psychology than intellect.’ Hope you like this idea too.

 

5 comments:

  1. Jake Abel said... December 14, 2008 at 1:34 PM

    Great wrap-up post to end the semester Susan! I think this is really interesting, and goes to show exactly what we learned over the semester - that is that innovation doesn't magically happen in someone's mind, but is the product of specific processes and exercises that stimulate creativity or the recognition of unsolved problems. And the best part is, while it may be more difficult to teach creativity, learning the processes is definitely doable.  

  2. John Rotheray said... December 14, 2008 at 7:32 PM

    Susan's seventh habit of highly innovative people is a very important one. Curiosity is needed to discover information that can be used in different fields. I think the best innovators discover solution patterns and effectively map them to different problems.  

  3. Becky Bishop said... December 15, 2008 at 12:38 PM

    Personally, "persistence" is the most interesting habit mentioned in Susan's article, as I struggle with finding the right balance between persistence and the parallel phenomenon of "escalation of commitment." Persistence is critical in the face of failure, but how do you know when subsequent decisions go beyond the level of rationality and when you should just walk away?

    In other words, as W.C. Fields once said, "If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

    For others, like me, wishing to become better at making this decision, I found an interesting PowerPoint written by Prof. Stephen R. Block (see www.guu.ru/files/Nonrational_Escalation_of_Commitment.ppt). This presentation sets forth one perspective on the causes of escalations of commitment and how to prevent irrational escalation in the future.  

  4. Jeffrey Xie said... December 18, 2008 at 4:20 PM

    what affects the habit of innovation? personal interest, economic rewards, job requirement, or social envriroment and etc.? maybe the combination. understanding drivers and leveraging them may help promote innovation...  

  5. Xiaoyan Sun said... December 21, 2008 at 10:56 PM

    Becky,

    Thanks for the comments. You raised a very interesting topic. I guess there could be two types of persistence. The first will be sticking to the same way of doing things and believing it will lead to result anyhow. This way will easily lead to "escalation of commitment." Another type of persistence is believing there should be a resolution to the problem so I keep trying again and again but open to all the possible solutions. The second type should be a healthy way for innovation.As the article quoted Thomas A. Edison: “Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration“.  

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