In the early stages of innovation, your goal is to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can.
In my mind, so-called "cultures of innovation" really boil down to one word: curiosity.
A next-generation innovation writer and thought leader worth watching.
I've come to the conclusion that the core characteristic that separates companies that get innovation from those that don't is a simple word: curiosity.
The CEO should ask what he or she can do to raise the organization's curiosity quotient. One way to do this is to seek to learn more about current or prospective customers, not to figure out which segmentation model to slot them into, but to really understand them as human beings. Another is to live at the intersections where innovation magic occurs.
Anytime you see a constrained market, where consumption is limited to those who have special skills or are wealthy, that signals an opportunity for innovation.
Not only do innovators have to deal with all of the fundamental challenges of innovation, they have to do so in an environment that often is implicitly hostile towards innovation.
I think people make innovation much more complicated than it needs to be.
The school at which you studied - design school, disruptive school, TRIZ school, user-centered innovation school, etc - determines the specific words you use.
Innovation is doubly hard inside big companies.
