Personal Creativity Reflection

The Innovators DNA

The Innovators DNA is a guide to problem solving skills, and the steps one needs to take to innovate.
It encourages risk taking and a set of behaviors to exhibit to help people innovate efficiently and better.
It talks covers all aspects of innovation, including people, processes, and philosophies. Innovative
executives who excelled at discovery often lead companies. They monitor and maintain an adequate
proportion of high discovery quotient people in every management level, functional area, and decision.
Innovate leaders need to encourage innovative behaviors in the rest of the company. Leaders do this by
firmly establishing a philosophy at the founding of the company. They do this by four main concepts.
Firstly, being innovative is everyones job, not just the research and development team. Secondly, the
company needs to believe that disruption is part of our innovation portfolio. Disruptive innovation
catapults small companies into large leaders. Companies need to deploy small, properly organized
innovation project teams. This will emphasize how important innovation is, and will keep the company
on track from catching the incumbents curse. Finally, companies MUST take smart risks in pursuit of
innovation. Companies must also regulate processes for innovation. They must explicitly encourage
employees to associate, question, observe, network, and experiment. Most importantly, in order to keep
itself innovative, the company must have processes designed to hire, train, reward, and promote
discovery driven people.
I found this section particularly useful because I dont think of myself as a particularly innovative
person, but with the right tools I can train myself to become one. I have used the Innovators DNA
model throughout my semester while working on my capstone and while practicing my yoga and the
yogic philosophy. During construction of my capstone, I have been faced with some very difficult
dilemmas on how to best execute certain functions and design the simulation. By using the Innovators
DNA model, and interacting with the BSCI105 students I TA for, I have been able to get good data and
improve my capstone through innovation techniques. I have also done this in my yoga practice as my
professor has encouraged us to change small things about our behavior, such as multitasking or
brushing our teeth with our non-dominant hand. These small changes in behavior have caused me to
be much more observant of the world around me, and the model will continue to help me develop as I
strive to learn more, do more, and grow more in my permanent beta state.

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