The guys from Think Simple Now decided to explore these questions, and they compiled a list with the 7 habits of highly innovative people. The first one is:

1. Persistence – Innovation involves more than just great ideas. We need faith, hard work and a laser sharp focus for the end result to keep persisting for our vision in the face of roadblocks. We tend to see the end result of a creative idea in awe, but what we don’t see are the actions, hard work and persistence behind the scene to make the vision a reality.

The other six are:
2. Remove Self-Limiting Inhibitions
3. Take Risks, Make Mistakes
4. Escape
5. Writing Things Down
6. Find Patterns & Create Combinations
7. Curiosity

1. The Accidental Influentials (Duncan J. Watts)
“Our argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don’t interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these noncelebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won’t propagate very far or affect many people.”

6. An Emerging Hotbed of User-Centered Innovation (Eric von Hippel)
“Breakthrough medical-equipment innovations such as the heart-lung machine and the first automated drug pumps were developed by doctors at the leading edge of practice, not by firms that manufacture medical equipment. Novel food categories like sports energy drinks and gels were developed by sports enthusiasts. This process of users’ coming up with products is increasingly well documented, and some companies, at least, are actively trying to take advantage of it. But what about governments?

Governments? What do they have to do with the development of something like a sports gel? Actually, governments have always attempted, in a variety of ways, to affect how firms innovate. Most countries, developing and developed alike, view innovation as vital to their economic growth and well-being and spend varying portions of their national budgets to support it. That support has typically come in the form of R&D grants for scientific researchers and R&D tax credits for manufacturers. This focus on technology push has not attracted much controversy. But recent research shows that the 70% to 80% of new product development that fails does so not for lack of advanced technology but because of a failure to understand users’ needs. The emergence of user-centered innovation clearly shows that this near-exclusive focus on technological advance is misplaced.”

11.Innovation and Growth: Size Matters (Geoffrey B. West)
“We did indeed find that cities manifest power-law scaling similar to the economy-of-scale relationships observed in biology: a doubling of population requires less than a doubling of certain resources. The material infrastructure that is analogous to biological transport networks—gas stations, lengths of electrical cable, miles of road surface—consistently exhibits sublinear scaling with population.

However, to our surprise, a new scaling phenomenon appeared when we examined quantities that are essentially social in nature and have no simple analogue in biology—those associated with innovation and wealth creation. They include patent activity, number of supercreative people, wages, and GDP. For such quantities the exponent (the analogue of ¾ in metabolic rate) exceeds 1, clustering around a common value of 1.2. Thus, a doubling of population is accompanied by more than a doubling of creative and economic output. We call this phenomenon “superlinear” scaling: by almost any measure, the larger a city’s population, the greater the innovation and wealth creation per person.”

You can read the complete list here.

1) Joane Ooi – Creative Director at Shangai Tang
2) Peter Diamandis – Founder of X Prize Foundation
3) Jim Wicks – VP of Design at Motorola
4) Scott Cowen – President of Tulane University
5) Homaro Cantu – Chef at Moto
6) Reverend Richard Cizik – Co-Founder of Evangelical Climate Initiative
7 & 8) Rosemarie Ryan and Ty Montague – Co-Presidents at JWT
9) Davic McQuillen – Customer Experience Consultant at Credit Suisse
10) James Hitchcock – VP of Marketing at Country Music Television

You can browse through the slides here.

The reality is less romantic, successful companies will need to learn how to catalyze ideas on a systematic basis, probably using very structured methods. Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton have a very interesting essay on the Harvard Business Review (print edition) titled “Building an Innovation Factory” where they describe the process of knowledge brokering.

According to the authors the knowledge brokering cycle that fosters ideas and innovation within companies is composed of four main phases: capturing ideas, keeping ideas alive, imagining new uses for old ideas and putting promising concepts to the test. Below I will describe each one of the four phases:

Capturing ideas: companies should tap as many resources as possible to generate new ideas. People should also be able to play with things, both with their minds and with their hands. The HBS article brings the example of IDEO, a consulting company located in Palo Alto, which has many “Tech Boxes” scattered around their offices. Those “Tech Boxes” are nothing more than rooms packed with different materials and devices to stimulate new ideas.

Keeping ideas alive: psychology has clarified that the most difficult thing about solving problems is to able to use the right information on the right time, even if such information had already been learned people can not simply load it as a computer hard drive. Now if a single person already faces such a challenge imagine what happens when we consider huge organizations where you have many specialists, different geographical locations and people going and coming constantly. Companies should enable workers to play with ideas and incentive them to share knowledge so that ideas will not be forgotten.

Imagining new uses for old ideas: once a company is able to capture and keep ideas alive it will need to be able to apply those ideas to different contexts. There is a good quote from Thomas Edison where he defends that before starting a new project one should “study the present construction (…), ask for all past experiences, study and read everything on the subject.” Being innovative does not mean that you will need to reinvent the wheel every other day, often times more important than having answers is asking the right questions.

Putting promising concepts to the test: I have always defended that ideas are necessary but not sufficient. They certainly are the building blocks for innovation, but equally important is the execution. As the authors describe it: “a good idea for a new product or business practice isn’t worth much by itself. It needs to be turned into something that can be test and, if successful, integrated into the rest of a company does, makes or sells.”

For those of you not familiar with him, Roger has been giving seminars and workshops to stimulate people’s creativity since 1977, and he has worked with many large organizations all over the world. He is also known for the books he wrote on the subject, the most famous being “A Whack on the Side of your Head”. Recently he started blogging also, you can check his blog here.

Now, without further delay, the 7 questions with Roger von Oech:

1) There are many different definitions for creativity out there, is there any of them that appeal to you or do you have your own definition?

Yes, there are a lot of definitions of creativity. One that has worked for me over the years is: It’s the process that produces ideas which are both a) new and different, and also b) have some application or feasibility in a particular context. Thus, my definition of creativity emphasizes both originality and practicality.

Let me give an “off-the-wall” example. Let’s suppose that you have an idea for opening a chain of “Large and Tall” men’s clothing stores on the planet Venus. Clearly, that’s pretty original! But is it creative? Well, if that’s what you really intend to do, then my answer would be “no” because it is a highly impractical endeavor. But let’s suppose that you’re writing a novel, and one of the characters has recurring dreams about “opening a chain of ‘Large and Tall’ men’s clothing stores on the planet Venus, and he consults with a dream therapist and they have ongoing discussions about it and this advances the plot. In this case, the concept is creative because it works in a particular context.

One other thing, let’s suppose that you really are thinking about going into the retail clothing business, and you have the above idea. It is truly original. If you ask yourself: “How can I play with the idea to make it practical“, then you might end up with a creative idea. In other words, you look at this strange idea and decide to use it as a “stepping stone” to an idea that is both original and practical.

You might play with the idea of “Venus” and say, “if I look at Venus not as a planet, but as a metaphor for a place of love, what ideas does that give me?” And this could lead to all sorts of possibilities such as: clothing emphasizing romance, making the store like a love den, selling other “love” accoutrements in the store, promoting the store as the place where it’s “Valentine’s Day” all year long, etc. Of course, the marketplace and your own business abilities will ultimately determine how practical the ideas are.

2) Considering you have been consulting, writing and speaking about creativity for the past 30 years I assume that creativity is not something we are born with but rather a skill we can develop. How fast, however, can people be trained to become more creative?

Actually, I do assume that part of our genetic inheritance as human beings is the ability to look at the world in new and different ways. And just as some people can run faster or jump higher than others, the ability to think creatively is not evenly distributed. But we all have it to some extent. But many people tend to lose their creativity as they go through the school system and become socialized into adulthood.

And, yes, I think there are strategies you can employ to bolster your creativity. I wouldn’t be in this business if I believed otherwise! My books and card decks contain a lot of these strategies. My basic style is fun and informative (at least I hope it is).

3) You have worked with many of the largest organizations in the world (IBM, Microsoft, Dupont, CitiGroup, Disney, Sony, just to name a few). What role does the corporate culture play in stimulating creativity among the employees?

It plays a very significant role. If you’re part of a work culture that encourages — and expects — you to come up with innovative ideas, then you will probably look for ways to come up with different approaches to solve traditional problems.

One thing I recommend is that companies put a “innovation requirement” in people’s performance plans. If people know they’re going to be measured — and rewarded — for coming up with ideas, then they’ll put part of their workday focus in looking for innovative solutions. It also helps to give them the skills and tools to think creatively and implement innovative change.

4) In the near future I am planning to start my own company. Should it become successful I will need to hire some people, and probably I will want creative people to join my team. How can you understand if someone is creative? Is there any way to test it?

Talk to them, spend time with them, talk with their colleagues. Give them some open-ended problems to solve. See how many ways they can solve them. Do they rely on just one approach, or are they able to approach the problems from several points of view.

Do they have a sense of humor? I think that’s very important: there’s a close relationship between the “ha-ha” of humor and the “aha” of creative discovery. Can they laugh at themselves? Do they have wide interests that go beyond the narrow confines of your particular field? Do they seek out ideas and information from outside areas and disciplines? Do they have any offbeat hobbies? That’s a start.

5) I like to define invention as new concepts or products that emerge from individual’s ideas or from scientific research. Innovation, on the other hand, refers to the implementation (or commercialization) of the invention itself. According to you what is the relationship between invention, innovation and creativity?

Some of this is just semantics. But this is how I carry these words around in my head. For me, “creativity” is the ability to come up with original and feasible ideas. There are many fields and domains where one can do this. “Invention” (for me) typically refers to a specific product or service that is new. I tend to think of “innovation” as being more in the realm of industry, business, and commerce. And I think of “innovation” as getting a larger enterprise to change. But these are just my definitions.

6) I am very curious about your Ball of Whacks (a piece composed of 30 magnetic blocks that can be taken apart and rearranged in many different ways). How can such an apparently simple object function as a creativity tool?

I like to think of the Ball of Whacks as a “creative stimulant” and “mental freshener.” A large part of the human brain is given over to hand and eye functions. Playing with the individual pieces — they are actually rhombic pyramids — and making various shapes and forms with them will get your brain going in a way that just reading or sitting at a computer does not.

I also like to the think of the Ball of Whacks as a “creativity” workshop in a ball.” I wrote a 96 page illustrated guidebook that provides the user with some creative strategies and exercises he can employ. Playing with the Ball of Whacks is also a lot of fun.

7) Final question, are there any simple exercises that people can do at home or in the office to stimulate their creativity?

I think the easiest — and most powerful — creativity strategy you can employ at home or in the office is this: “Look for the second right answer.” When most people have a problem, they stop with the first right answer they find. That approach is fine for certain problems — mathematical ones come to my mind. But most problems have a variety of answers, and if you stop looking after you find an answer, then all the good alternatives will go undiscovered. But if you look for the second, and third, and fifth right answer, you are more likely to get some good creative alternatives.

For example: I’m holding a pen. What is it? A writing device — the first right answer. But what are the other right answers? It’s a pointer. A coffee stirrer. A telephone dialer. A weapon. A hole punch. An emergency tracheotomy tool. An advertising medium.

Thank you, Roger!