The Innovator's DNA. Clayton M. Christensen
innovators in our sample demonstrated a higher discovery quotient (scored higher on the discovery skills) than less successful ones. If you fail with an innovation, it may be that you didn’t ask all the right questions, make all of the necessary observations, talk to a large enough group of diverse people, or run the right experiments. Of course, it is also possible that you did all these things but an even newer technology emerged or some other bright innovator came up with an even better idea. Or maybe you just didn’t excel at executing on the idea or have the resources to compete with an established firm that imitated your invention. Many factors can prevent a new product or business idea from gaining traction in the market. But the better you are at asking the right questions, engaging in the right observations, eliciting ideas and feedback through networking with the right people, and running experiments, the less likely you are to fail.
Third, we spotlight different innovators and innovative companies to illustrate key ideas or principles, but not to set them up as perfect examples of how to be innovative. Some innovators we studied were “serial innovators,” as they had developed quite a number of innovations over time and appeared motivated to continue doing so. Others benefitted by being in the right place at the right time to make a critical observation, talk to a key person with particularly useful knowledge, or serendipitously learn from an experiment. They made an important discovery once, but they might not necessarily be capable or motivated (perhaps due to financial success) to continue generating innovative ideas. In similar fashion, we have found that innovative companies can quickly lose their innovative prowess, while others can quickly improve it. In chapter 8, we show that Apple’s innovation prowess (as measured by its innovation premium) dropped dramatically after Jobs left in 1984, but then jumped up dramatically a few years after he returned to lead the company. Procter & Gamble was a solid innovation performer before Lafley took the helm, but increased its innovation premium by 30 percent under his leadership. The point is that people and companies can change and may not always live up to our lofty expectations.
Ask yourself: Am I good at generating innovative business ideas? Do I know how to find innovative people for my organization? Do I know how to train people to be more creative and innovative? Some executives respond to the last question by encouraging employees to think outside the box. But thinking outside the box is precisely what employees (and executives) are trying to figure out. We’ve even watched some executives answer the “How do I think outside the box?” question with another equally generic (and unhelpful) answer, “Be creative.”
If you find yourself struggling with actionable answers to these questions, read on to gain a solid grasp of five skills that can make all the difference when facing your next innovation challenge. All leaders have problems and opportunities sitting in front of them for which they have no solution. It might be a new process. It might be a new product or service. It might be a new business model for an old business. In every case, the skills you build by putting into practice the innovator’s DNA may literally save your job, your organization, and perhaps your community. Indeed, we’ve found that if you want to rise to the highest levels of your organization—to a business unit manager, president, or CEO position—you need strong discovery skills. And if you want to lead a truly innovative organization, you likely will need to excel at those skills.
We hope that The Innovator’s DNA will encourage you to reclaim some of your youthful curiosity. Staying curious keeps us engaged and our organizations alive.3 Imagine how competitive your company will be ten years from now without innovators if its people didn’t find any new ways to improve its processes, products, or services. Clearly, your company would not survive. Innovators constitute the core of any company’s, or even country’s, ability to compete.
How The Innovator’s DNA Unfolds
Like a pocket-sized map in a foreign place, our book serves as a guide to your innovation journey. The first part (chapters 1 through 6) explains why the innovator’s DNA matters and how the pieces can combine into a personalized approach to innovation. We put flesh onto the “think different” slogan by explaining in detail the habits and techniques that allow innovators to think differently. The chapters in part one give rich detail about how to master the specific skills that are key to generating novel ideas—associating, questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting.
The second part (chapters 7 through 10) amplifies the building blocks of innovation by showing how the discovery skills of innovators described in part one operate in organizations and teams. Chapter 7 introduces our ranking of the world’s most innovative companies based on each company’s innovation premium, a market value premium based on investors’ expectations of future innovations. We also provide a framework for seeing how the innovator’s DNA works in the world’s most innovative teams and organizations. We call this the “3P” framework because it contains the discovery-driven building blocks of highly innovative organizations or teams—people, processes, and philosophies. Chapter 8 focuses on building-block number one, people, and describes how innovative organizations achieve maximum impact by actively recruiting, encouraging, and rewarding people who display strong discovery skills—and blending innovators effectively with folks who have strong execution skills. Chapter 9 shows innovative team and company processes that mirror the five discovery skills of disruptive innovators. In other words, innovative companies rely on processes to encourage—even require—their people to engage in questioning, observing, networking, experimenting, and associating. Chapter 10 focuses on the fundamental philosophies that guide behavior within innovative teams and organizations. These philosophies not only guide disruptive innovators but also get imprinted in the organization, giving people the courage to innovate. Finally, for those interested in building discovery skills in yourself, your team, and even the next generation (young people you know), in appendix C we guide you through a process of taking your innovator’s DNA to the next level.
We’re delighted that you’re starting or continuing your own innovation journey. We have watched scores of individuals take the ideas in this book to heart and who describe how they have dramatically improved their innovation skills as a result. They continually confirm that the journey is worth taking. We think you’ll feel the same way once you’ve finished reading about and mastering the skills of a disruptive innovator.
The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
—Steve Jobs, founder and CEO, Apple Inc.
DO I KNOW HOW to generate innovative, even disruptive, business ideas? Do I know how to find creative people or how to train people to think outside the box? These questions stump most senior executives, who know that the ability to innovate is the “secret sauce” of business success. Unfortunately, most of us know very little about what makes one person more creative than another. Perhaps for this reason, we stand in awe of visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, and innovative executives like P&G’s A. G. Lafley, Bain & Company’s Orit Gadiesh, and eBay’s Meg Whitman. How do these people come up with groundbreaking new ideas? If it were possible to discover the inner workings of the masters’ minds, what could the rest of us learn about how innovation really happens?
Ideas for Innovation
Consider the case of Jobs, who was recently ranked the world’s number-one best-performing CEO in a study published by Harvard Business Review.1 You may recall Apple’s famous “Think Different” ad campaign, whose slogan says it all. The campaign featured innovators from different fields, including Albert Einstein, Picasso, Richard Branson, and John Lennon, but Jobs’s face might easily have been featured among the others. After all, everyone knows that Jobs is an innovative guy, that he knows how to think different.