lways trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds.

Ability To Experiment

Innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).

bility to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior.

Observing

Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. His six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study you found five “discovery skills” that distinguish them.

InnovatorS' DNA 

good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

Networking

questioning turbo-charges observing, experimenting, and networking, but questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others. Overall, associating is the key skill

Best Of All Five

Ability to ask “what if”, “why”, and “why not” questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture.

Questioning

It’s a cognitive skill that allows creativepeople to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.

Association

What makes visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, and P&G’s A.G. Lafley tick? In a question-and-answer session with HBR contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. Fryer: You conducted a […]