Jeff Dyer

Clayton M. Christensen

Hal B. Gregersen

Some people are just natural innovators, right? With no apparent effort, they discover ideas for new products, services, and entire businesses. It may look like innovators are born, not made. But according to Jeffrey Dyer and Hal Gregersen, anyone can become more innovative. How? Master the discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers. InThe Innovator's DNA, the authors identify five capabilities demonstrated by the best innovators: Associating: drawing connections between questions, problems, or ideas from unrelated fields Questioning: posing queries that challenge common wisdom Observing: scrutinizing the behavior of customers, suppliers, and competitors to identify new ways of doing things Experimenting: constructing interactive experiences and provoking unorthodox responses to see what insights emerge Networking: meeting people with different ideas and perspectives The authors explain how to generate ideas with these skills, collaborate with "delivery-driven" colleagues to implement ideas, and build innovation skills throughout your organization to sharpen its competitive edge. They also provide a self-assessment for rating your own innovator's DNA. Practical and provocative, this book is an essential resource for all teams seeking to strengthen their innovative prowess.

Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators

The Innovator's DNA

Fabian Beiner

One's ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but also a function of behaviors.

Innovators were simply much more likely to question, observe, network, and experiment compared to typical executives.

Innovative companies are almost always led by innovative leaders.

These innovators steer entirely clear of a common cognitive trap called the status quo bias-the tendency to prefer an existing state of affairs to alternative ones. Most of us simply accept the status quo. We may even like routine and prefer not to rock the boat. We adhere to the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," while not really questioning whether "it" is "broke." In contrast, innovators see many things as "broke." And they want to fix them.

Innovative entrepreneurs are often described as poor managers because they lack the ability to follow through on their new business ideas and are often irrationally overconfident in them.

Like Cook, we have found that observing is a key discovery skill for most innovators who tend to generate business insights from one of two types of observations:

1. Watching people in different circumstances who are trying to do a job and gaining insight about what job they really want to get done.

2. Observing people, processes, companies, or technologies and seeing a solution that can be applied (perhaps with some modification) in a different context.

Ten Questions to Ask While Observing Customers

Here are ten questions you should ask while observing customers to better understand the job they want done and how you can offer a product or service that will help them do it better.

1. How do customers become aware of a need for your product or service? Is there a way to make it easier or more convenient for them to find your offering?

2. What do customers really use your product or service for? What job is the customer hiring your product or service to do?

3. What does the customer ultimately consider as the most important features when selecting a final product or service? (If the customer has a hundred points to alate across all the features he considers important, how would he allocate them?)

4. How do consumers order and purchase your product? Is there a way you can make it easier, more convenient, or less costly?

5. How do you deliver your product or service? Can you do it faster, cheaper, in a completely different way?

6. How do customers pay for your product or service? Is there a way to make it easier or more convenient?

7. What frustrations do your customers have when trying to use your product? Do they use your product in ways you didn't expect?

8. What do consumers need help with when they use the

9. Do customers do things that hurt the longevity or reliability of your product or service?

10. How do customers repair, service, or dispose of your product? Are there opportunities to make this easier or more convenient (or teach the customer how to use the product so it requires less maintenance or to do self-maintenance)?

The Innovator's DNA quotes

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