Innovation and the Right People (Part 1)

I was asked to speak at this CSU event on November 9th about Marketing Innovation. Having innovated in both Corporate America and now a Start-up, I have come to some conclusions around what makes innovation work. Some of them I just did without knowing they were best practices and others I picked up along the way through books listed below. The one thing, above all others, that is the most important in creating and innovative company/organization is having the right people. One could put in place all of the right processes and procedures, but they do not guarantee innovation will work. While having business processes and procedures are important in the business of innovation, the creative process of innovation happens in an opposite, informal and unpredictable way. Fundamentally, innovation occurs because the right people work on the same thing at the same time.

There are many books out on innovation like The art of Innovation and the 10 faces of Innovation, and Rules for Revolutionaries, and Lucky or Smart: Secrets to an Entrepreneurial Life. However, I have yet to find one that specifically focuses on people’s traits and characteristics which predisposes them to becoming innovators.

So what exactly are the right kinds of people? Pulling from these books, and what I have observed on my own, people who innovate are those with the following traits:

1) People who can do things. They can sell, engineer, create presentations and marketing materials, and can communicate effectively. Generally, people that can do things are the ones that push things through to completion. They are creative, technical, and can improvise to just get things done. They are virtuosos in their own right, but also understand enough about other matters to have the where-with-all to meet critical deadlines.

2) Curious (right brain) people. I worked with a guy who said something to me that I thought was interesting. He was the Managing Director of a successful distributorship that sold the fluid system technologies made by Swagelok here in Cleveland. In hiring sales people, he always looked for one key trait above others – curiosity. He felt that curious people would find their way into opportunities by asking questions and thinking differently. I believe he is right. People who are curious are fundamentally interested in how things work, challenge status quo, and are creative. It doesn’t matter if they are sales people, engineers or lawyers, when there are curious people in one room great ideas occur naturally. Nothing is forced or rote; there seems to be a stream of consciousness that naturally allows people to play off one another. When you are in the presence of curious people, you know. When you are not, you know. Finding people who can do things and are curious is your best bet to bringing innovation into your organization. Keep the group small and keep them away from the rest of the organization. That’s what Apple does.

3) People with Blind Faith. Hopefully, there will be a few people that can do things with blind faith in your innovation team mix. People with blind faith can handle rejection, really bad news and inspire people when faced with seemingly impossible obstacles. Inherently in innovation is the unknown, which always has a way of bringing up unexpected surprises that, under normal circumstances, would kill a project. Technical, political, operational, there are always surprises. Unless the team has blind faith that anything can be done, great opportunities never see the light of day.

During a project I worked on while at Swagelok, I spearheaded a project to prove out a welding process with which the Oil and Gas industry had problems for more than a decade. Our approach was a radical departure from conventional methods and we received major skepticism from the industry and Swagelok management alike. The project was looking pretty grim with no solutions in site and the end user customer gave us a deadline to perfect the process in 30 days or they would not be able to use it. Management told us to scrap the project. But the team felt an unwavering commitment to finding a solution as we had 30 days and knew we would be solving a big problem for the customer.

In the end, we got a tip on one last option that we thought might work. Instead of asking for permission from management, the team visited the organization with a technology, that in combination with our welding process, theoretically might work. Could we prove it out in time for the end user? In days tests were run and results back. The technology worked far better than we could have ever expected and it was months before it could actually be scientifically proven. It was consistent enough and our process was speced. On top of that, a patent was awarded, one person got a PhD and the company sold a good bit (sorry, can’t disclose that) right off the bat. Curious people that can do things working really hard with blind faith create luck. Bo Peabody talks about this in his book Lucky or Smart.

4) Pranksters. Why pranksters? It’s really hard to understand why people turn out to be risk takers (i.e. entrepreneurs). What is interesting is that most of the best entrepreneurs are not A students and usually love to play a good joke on people. Good pranksters know how to push the envelope without getting caught or even breaking the rules. If anything, you need to have people on your team with a good sense humor that can actually enjoy failing. This is somewhat covered in Tom Kelley’s book The Art of Innovation.

5) People 25- 30 years old that each sushi. People between the ages of 25 and 30 are in between coming out of common sense overload (Education as we know it), testing their education in the real world, and finding their way. They just seem to be more open to things, especially overcoming failure. This is important, because if they have never failed before they turn 30, I believe it is unlikely they will even try. Most get married, comfortable and never experience the fruits of testing their blind faith. I think it’s analogous to a book (for the life of me I can not recall the author or title) that reported on a survey they did of people who eat sushi. In their experience, those that tried sushi before 30 were more likely to try it again and enjoy it than those who did not. Something happens to people after they graduate form college and get comfortable in their career. It’s hard to get them out of that comfort zone so having too many people over the age of 30 working on innovation may not make all the sense in the world. I use the sushi test often to see how open people are, no matter what their age. Give it a try 🙂

In my experience, people who innovate all share dominant traits 1 and 2 – they are creative and must know how to get things done. Finding a few that also have characteristics 3, 4 or 5 will round out your team’s ability to overcome the greatest obstacles and ultimately be successful. These people take risk and are not afraid to fail. In a subsequent post, I will give my 2 cents on who not to include (or include too closely) in the process of innovation.

By Jay Yoo