The Innovator's DNA. Clayton M. Christensen

simply “associating.” Associating happens as the brain tries to synthesize and make sense of novel inputs. It helps innovators discover new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. Innovative breakthroughs often happen at the intersection of diverse disciplines and fields. Author Frans Johanssen described this phenomenon as “the Medici effect,” referring to the creative explosion in Florence when the Medici family brought together creators from a wide range of disciplines—sculptors, scientist, poets, philosophers, painters, and architects. As these individuals connected, they created new ideas at the intersection of their respective fields, thereby spawning the Renaissance, one of the most innovative eras in history. Put simply, innovative thinkers connect fields, problems, or ideas that others find unrelated.

      The other four discovery skills trigger associational thinking by helping innovators increase their stock of building-block ideas from which innovative ideas spring. Specifically, innovators engage the following behavioral skills more frequently:

      Questioning. Innovators are consummate questioners who show a passion for inquiry. Their queries frequently challenge the status quo, just as Jobs did when he asked, “Why does a computer need a fan?” They love to ask, “If we tried this, what would happen?” Innovators, like Jobs, ask questions to understand how things really are today, why they are that way, and how they might be changed or disrupted. Collectively, their questions provoke new insights, connections, possibilities, and directions. We found that innovators consistently demonstrate a high Q/A ratio, where questions (Q) not only outnumber answers (A) in a typical conversation, but are valued at least as highly as good answers.

      Observing. Innovators are also intense observers. They carefully watch the world around them—including customers, products, services, technologies, and companies—and the observations help them gain insights into and ideas for new ways of doing things. Jobs’s observation trip to Xerox PARC provided the germ of insight that was the catalyst for both the Macintosh’s innovative operating system and mouse, and Apple’s current OSX operating system.

      Networking. Innovators spend a lot of time and energy finding and testing ideas through a diverse network of individuals who vary wildly in their backgrounds and perspectives. Rather than simply doing social networking or networking for resources, they actively search for new ideas by talking to people who may offer a radically different view of things. For example, Jobs talked with an Apple Fellow named Alan Kay, who told him to “go visit these crazy guys up in San Rafael, California.” The crazy guys were Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray, who headed up a small computer graphics operation called Industrial Light & Magic (the group created special effects for George Lucas’s movies). Fascinated by their operation, Jobs bought Industrial Light & Magic for $10 million, renamed it Pixar, and eventually took it public for $1 billion. Had he never chatted with Kay, he would never have wound up purchasing Pixar, and the world might never have thrilled to wonderful animated films like Toy Story,WALL-E, and Up.

      Experimenting. Finally, innovators are constantly trying out new experiences and piloting new ideas. Experimenters unceasingly explore the world intellectually and experientially, holding convictions at bay and testing hypotheses along the way. They visit new places, try new things, seek new information, and experiment to learn new things. Jobs, for example, has tried new experiences all his life—from meditation and living in an ashram in India to dropping in on a calligraphy class at Reed College. All these varied experiences would later trigger ideas for innovations at Apple Computer.

      Collectively, these discovery skills—the cognitive skill of associating and the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting—constitute what we call the innovator’s DNA, or the code for generating innovative business ideas.

      The Courage to Innovate

      Why do innovators question, observe, network, and experiment more than typical executives? As we examined what motivates them, we discovered two common themes. First, they actively desire to change the status quo. Second, they regularly take smart risks to make that change happen. Consider the consistency of language that innovators use to describe their motives. Jobs wants to “put a ding in the universe.” Google cofounder Larry Page has said he’s out to “change the world.” These innovators steer entirely clear of a common cognitive trap called the status quo bias—the tendency to prefer an existing state of affairs to alternative ones. Most of us simply accept the status quo. We may even like routine and prefer not to rock the boat. We adhere to the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” while not really questioning whether “it” is “broke.” In contrast, innovators see many things as “broke.” And they want to fix them.

      How do innovators break the status quo? One way is to refuse to be dictated by other people’s schedules. Just glance at an innovative executive’s typical calendar and you will find a radically different schedule compared to less inventive executives. We found that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50 percent more time on discovery activities (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) than CEOs with no innovation track record. That translated into spending almost one more day each week on discovery activities. They understand that fulfilling their dreams to change the world means they’ve got to spend a significant amount of time trying to discover how to change the world. And having the courage to innovate means that they are actively looking for opportunities to change the world.

      Embracing a mission for change makes it much easier to take smart risks, make mistakes, and most of all, learn quickly from them. Most innovative entrepreneurs we studied felt that mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, they are an expected cost of doing business. “If the people running Amazon.com don’t make some significant mistakes,” Jeff Bezos told us, “then we won’t be doing a good job for our shareholders because we won’t be swinging for the fences.” In short, innovators rely on their “courage to innovate”—an active bias against the status quo and an unflinching willingness to take smart risks—to transform ideas into powerful impact.

      In summary, the DNA of innovators—or the code for generating innovative ideas—is expressed in the model shown in figure 1-1. The key skill for generating innovative ideas is the cognitive skill of associational thinking. The reason that some people generate more associations than others is partly because their brains are just wired that way. But a more critical reason is that they more frequently engage in the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting. These are the catalysts for associational thinking. Of course, the next question is, why do some people engage these four skills more than others? The answer is that they have the courage to innovate. They are willing to embrace a mission for change and take risks to make change happen. The bottom line is that to improve your ability to generate innovative ideas, you need to practice associational thinking and more frequently engage in questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting. That will likely only happen if you can somehow cultivate the courage to innovate.

      FIGURE 1-1

      The innovator’s DNA model for generating innovative ideas

      As innovators actively engage in their discovery skills over a lifetime, they build discovery habits, and they become defined by them. They grow increasingly confident in their ability to discover what’s next, and they believe deeply that generating creative insights is their job. It is not something to delegate to someone else. As A. G. Lafley declared, “innovation is the central job of every leader—business unit managers, functional leaders, and the CEO.”⁹

      The Innovator’s DNA

      We’ve just told you that the ability to be innovative is not based primarily on genetics. At the same time, we’re using the DNA metaphor to describe the inner workings of innovators, which suggests that it is. Bear with us for a moment. (And welcome to the world of innovation, where the ability to synthesize two seemingly