Do you assume great innovators work alone? Well, you’re wrong. “[Myths like these] may make it easier for our brains to comprehend innovation, but believing them is kind of like believing in magic,” says Braden Kelley, an innovation speaker and trainer and co-founder of Innovation Excellence. In fact, warns Kelley, falling for these myths can keep you from turning a promising idea into a valuable innovation.Read the 7 innovation myths!!
Bottomline:
Whereas I don't wholly agree with what the authors are saying, I do believe that great innovators are not born geniuses.
One can become a really good innovator by doing three things really well:
1. Observation of what's working and what's not. Most people don't observe. Remember what Leonardo Da Vinci said: "There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see." Steve Jobs observed that most people hated their cell phones because they were very difficult to use among other things. He and Apple went on to design the easiest and the best smartphone in the world, the iPhone (after learning from the iPod).
2. Prediction of trends and forecasting where the demand will be. Innovators foresee and are able to find new trends faster and quicker than most people. Innovators have a hypothesis of what could happen next. Toyota saw the rise in gas prices and people's changing perceptions about green technology and made the Prius. Apple again predicted that the world will love a new tablet wherein users can simply interact with their fingers... And the iPad was born!
3. Execution of observations and predictions into real products or services. It's not enough to observe, predict and conjecture. Many innovators fail when they can't execute their ideas into products that people want and love. Motorola had a great idea towards creating a worldwide satellite cell phone, but failed to create a device that was easy to use, small, affordable and worked. Remember Iridium? Later, it hit a home run with the Razr, only to be run over by smartphones.