Why Innovation is also about Personality

How come innovation doesn’t happen despite sufficient resources?

Thinking of the enormous resources particularly in big corporations like huge innovation budgets, fancy innovation labs and departments,??there are good reasons to wonder why innovation and new products fail – the latter at a rate of 90%. We have found out that one very important factor in innovation is dramatically underestimated: people and their personalities.

Where are the people in the innovation process?

Most of what you’ve heard about innovation may be fact-based. You may have read a lot about?methodology and?strategy,?too.However, what innovation is about first and foremost, are human beings. They are the actual drivers or hinderers. Therefore, it is important to find?extraordinary people for your innovation projects, for each stage of the process.?

Find people who are open to the new things for your innovation projects.?

Find people who believe that together they will achieve their innovation goals. Find real team players whose ego is not in their way, who are enthusiastic and not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Who are not scared of failing.??Find people who are motivated and inspire each other, who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and ready to grow.?

What gets in people’s way in the innovation process?

Well, it’s mainly themselves or their interaction with others. One reason why innovation fails is that there’s a lot of uncertainty, which is often due to fear of failure. We all have our own failure histories and views on that issue. To many people, failure is not part of their individual success stories, but a sign of their seemingly poor performance they feel ashamed of. Due to that negative attitude towards making mistakes or wrong decisions, they’d rather not decide at all, which is a no-go in the innovation process.

There are other reasons, too, why someone’s in their own way. But let’s have a look at their interaction with others: Another explanation as to why innovation projects fail is people’s dominant ego. So it can happen that decisions made by others are overruled just because people have the power to do so. That’s one of the reasons why, in our innovation teams with customers, people have equal rights so that this won’t happen.

And thanks to our innovation framework, something like social loafing can’t happen either because people stay focused, cooperate closely with each other and there’s just no idle time.

How to hire the right people for your innovation projects.

The future of a company depending more and more on its innovation forces, it is very important to establish a company culture where employees feel invited to contribute to your company’s growth. For this reason, you should hire people who are enthusiastic about pushing boundaries and have the potential to take an active part in transformation processes, which often go hand in hand with innovation activities.

These are not always people with the best grades or linear career paths. What they do need though is a skill set combining the personal traits, abilities and maybe knowledge that makes them suitable for your company and their mission. However, in order to attract great and motivated people, there needs to be your promise that you will provide them with an atmosphere where they can grow. It also needs leaders who know how to weld their teams together and lead by example. If you want to get more insights, just follow us or visit our website.