Are You Born Innovative?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[<p>Two important questions were posed to me the other day, "Are you born innovative? Or do you learn to be innovative"?<br><br>Stop for a minute and reflect on how you would answer the above. On which side would you lean? And don't answer with "it depends" - that is not an option here!<br><br>Actually, the question is not that difficult to answer. Just look at a typical four year old around you. What kind of behaviour&nbsp; does a four-year- old typically exhibit? She constantly observes the environment.&nbsp; She never gets tired of asking questions. She is not fearful of making mistakes. She never hesitates to try out different experiments and is comfortable making mistakes, learning and trying once again. Remember how she learned to walk? By constantly trying and never giving up!<br><br>If you reflect on the above behaviors of a four-year-old child these are very much the behavioural traits that we associate with innovative people. So the first part of the question is quite easy to answer: people are indeed born innovative!<br><br>This is good news because it shows that we all have a lot of potential to innovate. However, frequently we deplore the fact that people in our organizations are not innovative enough. Why does this happen?<br><br>There are two major reasons in my view. One, our schools and universities do a poor job in stimulating innovative thinking. Most schools and universities around the world are still geared towards rote learning and memorisation in a model which assumes that "teacher knows best and role of student is to replicate what the teacher writes on the board". Few schools encourage out of the box thinking amongst students.<br><br>Two, organisations are designed for efficiency of execution and not for learning via bold experimentation. Firms are focused to get groups of people to execute on processes efficiently and reliably. Incremental innovations are fine but there is little room for radical ideas that may throw the whole organisational design into question! How else can you explain why an outsider - Apple - has completely transformed the music industry?<br><br>So to answer to the second question, it is not about learning innovative habits. Rather it is a question of unlearning bad habits that block innovation! We all have the DNA for innovation within us. We just need the courage and a supportive organisational environment to go back to our childhood behaviour! Well, at least for some part of the day, every day!<br><br>The author is the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology at INSEAD, France.&nbsp; He has authored&nbsp; several books on technology, policy and innovation. He can be reached at: soumitra dot dutta at insead dot edu<br><br>Comments on this note can be sent to: mail at soumitradutta dot com</p>