Quirky

Most “serial?breakthrough innovators” are misfits, eccentrics, outsiders, kooks, rebels and nonconformists.

To understand what makes serial breakthrough innovators?special, consider?their individual traits. These prodigious, world-class, “quirky” innovators include:

• Elon Musk –?A bookish, nerdy kid,?Musk developed his first?video game at age 12. By age 28, he was a millionaire. During the next 10 years, he created the?electronic payment system that became PayPal. Musk taught himself rocket science and founded SpaceX, an aerospace transportation services firm that established the practicality of reusable rockets.?Musk helped develop Tesla Motors, which manufactures and sells electric cars. It became “the first new-car company to go public in the United States?in more than 50 years.”?Musk constantly attempts the impossible. He doesn’t care whether people think he should.
• Nikola Tesla – Known as the “wizard genius,” Tesla was responsible for upward?of 200 noteworthy innovations, some considered impossible to achieve, including the first long-distance wireless communication systems, alternating-current electrical systems and remote-control robots.?Tesla was an oddball and social misfit who suffered from mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder?and oversensitivity to sensory stimuli. Obsessed with the number three, Tesla would walk three circles around a building before going inside. His innovative work caused him to experience what he called “continuous rapture.” He also had?neurological disturbances?that he described as feeling as if?his “brain had caught fire.”
• Albert Einstein – During a four-month period at age 26, Einstein wrote four papers that revolutionized long-established scientific principles concerning space, time, mass and energy.” His developments in particle physics?opened the door for quantum mechanics, which would replace conventional physics. Einstein always kept himself apart from other people and society. His separateness enabled him to become an original thinker.
• Marie Curie – The woman who discovered radium and?the first woman to win a?Nobel Prize – twice, in two different fields –?preferred isolation and?suffered from chronic depression.
• Thomas Edison – Known as the “Napoleon of invention,” Edison spent most of his life working?in his laboratory. He often slept on a lab table. Edison had only three months of grammar school,?but, by age 12, he had read?the Dictionary of Sciences,?Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume’s History of England, Sears’s History of the World?and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
• Benjamin Franklin – A great American patriot, Franklin had formal schooling for only a few years during his childhood. Yet he was an active inventor, and he?led the development of the Philadelphia Public Library, the implementation of a system for sweeping and lighting the city’s streets, and the country’s first volunteer firefighting cooperative.
• Steve Jobs – This visionary?developer of groundbreaking products, including?the iPhone, the iPad?and the iPod, drove around with no?license plate. He often parked?in spots meant for people with disabilities, and he?lived in a house without furniture. Yet Jobs was so brilliantly charismatic and persuasive that people described him as possessing a “reality distortion field.”
• Dean Kamen – Inventor of the Segway, Kamen also created the first portable kidney dialysis machine, the first wearable drug infusion pump?and other revolutionary devices. He bought his own island?and announced that he wanted to secede from the United States to avoid the stricture of its rules.

Serial?breakthrough innovators often see themselves as different and prefer solitude, social detachment and isolation.

Quirky innovators generally crave isolation and are?largely social outcasts. Franklin,?an accomplished social networker, was an exception. Most are fiercely independent. They?love their work?and often toil like maniacs. Serial breakthrough innovators believe in their own abilities, are idealistic and pursue?ambitious goals.

“Mr. Edison has few friends. Because of his work, he has had to live a great deal by himself and in himself – shut out from the social contacts open to most men.” (Thomas Edison’s second wife, Mina Miller Edison)

Many serial innovators, including Franklin and Edison,?were?autodidacts, that is, self-taught.?Often, such thinkers?sleep less than average, and they have terrific memories.?Because of their isolation, serial breakthrough innovators?don’t?care about or buy into conventional wisdom. They think for themselves without limits.

Most serial?breakthrough innovators do their best to separate themselves from other people.?Einstein lived an?isolated life yet eventually became the world’s most famous scientist. Curie, who studied independently until she went to the Sorbonne, lived what she described as a sequestered, “anti-natural” life.?A depressive, she found contentment?in?self-imposed isolation.

Yet they have complete faith in themselves and their ability to solve big problems.

Serial?breakthrough innovators are often supremely self-confident people who think big. For example, Musk believes in himself totally. People call him the “walking moonshot” because of his exuberant belief in his own abilities?and his readiness to attempt the seemingly impossible. Psychologists call this attribute “self-efficacy.”

“The life of the serial breakthrough innovator is not for everyone. Many of the factors that helped them change the world in meaningful ways are inimitable, and many of us would not choose the kind of life they led.”

Kamen, a college dropout, has unbreakable confidence in his reasoning abilities and?little interest in the boundaries that constrain other people. Einstein disrespected authority and other experts, while always believing?in himself and his ability to figure things out.

“Genius and mania”?define?many serial?breakthrough innovators.

Serial?breakthrough innovators are more intelligent than the average person –?and a bit crazier. Tesla exemplified this topsy-turvey mentality. He was brilliant and had a photographic memory, yet he suffered from serious mental issues, including OCD, mania and germ phobia.

“By embracing weirdness, we might better allow the natural creativity of people to flourish.”

A dopamine imbalance in Tesla’s brain may have?turbocharged his creativity. Like most serial breakthrough innovators, Tesla slept less than most people. But?his lack of proper sleep was extraordinary. He averaged two hours a night,?and many nights got?no sleep at all.

These innovators have ambitious goals that they?treat as holy missions.

These inventors also shared idealistic,?lofty goals for their innovations – though Edison’s holy grail was profit. They want to solve the world’s biggest problems. For example, through?his efforts to improve society, Franklin believed he was fulfilling his “duty to serve God and mankind.” His faith fueled his?determination to achieve?his goals.

“If we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay.” (Tesla)

Tesla, who developed AC electricity, also incorporated a higher purpose in his motivation. He believed that people needed a safe environment in order?to eliminate income inequality and suffering.

They are workaholics and derive great pleasure from their work.

Serial?breakthrough innovators are extreme workaholics. Tesla claimed to have worked from three in the morning until eleven in the evening every day. He?would often work until he collapsed. Edison possessed?amazing stamina for constant work in his laboratory. He often insisted that his assistants work all night in his lab?as he did.

“By their very nature, original ideas are often initially hard for others to understand and value.”

Francis Upton, one of Edison’s lab assistants, believed that Edison had little conception of the limits of endurance that constrained other people.?Upton felt that Edison’s physical and mental strength surpassed everyone else’s.?Like other serial?breakthrough innovators, Edison always dealt with problems and sought solutions no matter how often he failed. He forced his way to many breakthroughs.

Many serial?breakthrough innovators have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.

Consider?Marie Curie, born?Maria Salomea Sk?odowska in Poland in 1867. Her parents were members of the Polish aristocracy who lost most of their wealth after Russia invaded Poland that year.?Curie came of age?when Polish people were always defending their cultural heritage against the Russians. One way?her parents protected their culture was by educating?their children in secret about?forbidden Polish literature and the sciences. Her father was a teacher who dedicated himself to teaching all his children, including Marie, and she benefited greatly as a result. Eventually she studied at the School of Sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris.

“Separateness enables inventors to create heterodox ideas, but strong cohesive networks are likely to be better for getting them implemented.”

Curie believed that attaining an?education was her patriotic duty. In Poland, she participated in the Flying University, a secret,?underground school that provided?a university curriculum to Polish women. This gave Curie entreé to Warsaw’s most intelligent women.?They encouraged her?to study and learn. This era of “Polish positivism”?encouraged women to educate themselves, and Curie was able to do just that at the?right time and in the?right place.

Serial?breakthrough innovators require quick, easy access to technological and intellectual resources.?

Remarkable innovators succeed when they can?operate?in a sound, smoothly-running financial system?with available?capital and an educated populace.?In?most cases, these innovators had little personal?wealth and no?extensive formal education. However, many?were avid readers who taught themselves and fashioned their own idiosyncratic educational programs. All avidly devoured educational content in any form.

“Life gets a lot broader when you realize [that] everything around you that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you, and you can change it.” (Steve Jobs)”

Some innovators had people close to them who could help with their innovations. Jobs had the support of Steve Wozniak, a highly capable engineer. Jobs provided the crucial vision for their early computers, and Wozniak provided the technical expertise.?Access to technological and intellectual resources is paramount to innovators. Financial resources often may turn?out to matter less.

Nurture and promote your employees’?creativity and innovative?potential.

You may be able to duplicate the circumstances for your employees that helped these innovators create. Aim?to create?“situational advantages” and provide?resources that foster innovation.?Help your employees challenge current thinking, and let them?pursue innovation independently. Innovators’ devotion to separateness enables them to look beyond?common wisdom and to think for themselves. Einstein felt free to conceptualize physics as he saw fit. Musk felt free to pursue the idea of reusable rockets?because he wasn’t?part of the space industry. As outsiders, they didn’t feel bound to follow?established scientific and engineering dogma.?

Empower your employees to develop and submit original ideas. For example, Pixar, the?animated film company,?fosters innovation by allowing teams to?set their own hours, arrange their own offices, establish their own project management protocols and determine their own meeting schedules.

Give your?employees opportunities to work alone. People develop innovative concepts when they are free to entertain outlandish ideas. Creative ideas are fragile; groups can kill them quickly. Avoid meetings where the purpose is to get everyone to agree. Likewise, encourage the people in your workforce?to take risks.?Celebrate “bold but intelligent failures.” Give?people?access to technological and intellectual resources. The more knowledge your employees?have, the better they can use it in innovative ways.

The same applies to parenting.?Many modern parents thwart individual exploration by keeping?their children constantly active and engaged in team sports, after-school classes, and other extracurricular activities. Like innovative adults, children also need time to read, write, experiment?and reflect.