Bonne Nouvelle...

For the interest of the class, following the professor’s advice and considering I am a beginner in the field of entrepreneurship I decided to use “The Innovator’s DNA” (Dyer, Gregersen, Christensen ) as a reference book.

There is an excellent news at the beginning of the book : “Innovators can be made and not just born”. The authors use research and studies to illustrate that fact, thus highlighting that “result: roughly 25 percent to 40 percent of what we do innovatively stems from genetics”. Meaning the rest, about 2/3, of the creative skills can be acquired!! Why is that a good news? Well, because it means YOU, ME, ANYONE can become an innovator, and the promise of the first chapter is to explain us how to be such innovators. The plan is to learn about a set of 5 discovery skills that are common to innovators: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking and Experimenting!

Don’t be afraid to beak the status quo! That’s easy to say but quite difficult to do. Well some tips given in the book are to feel free to create your own schedule that should include as much as discovery activities as possible and make mistakes to learn faster. Be brave and take risks to allow change to happen is also key in the innovating process. It is all integrated since by being brave, by taking risks, by confronting the status quo you will strengthen the four behavioral discovery skills (questioning, observing, networking and experimenting). Then such behaviors will help you develop your cognitive associational skills that will lead you to more innovative thinking!!

Being an Innovator, and to a certain extent an entrepreneur is a mixed between cognitive competencies and behavioral skills. It is more accessible to us than we could imagine… Who wants to be the next Steve Jobs?

Claire-Marine