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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 22 2007, 8:40 PM EST (current) | laschmitt | |
| Dec 20 2007, 10:13 PM EST | srschwartz | 6 words added, 3 words deleted |
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Key: Additions Deletions
Innovation is at heart a human endeavor. It requires a deep understanding of diverse human values and motivation, but, perhaps more importantly, it demands certain aptitudes and talents of the innovator (or the team). The most essentials skills - the ones that are called upon again and again - include:
- Community Building - The skill to find who holds the most valuable knowledge and how you can find them within existing social networks.
- Elicitation - The ability to meet or talk with knowledgeable individuals and to internalize their motivations - as well as the motivations of those they themselves understand well.
- Discovery - Using knowledge of technologies and communities as well as that of both existing and potential solutions to conceive of new ideas. This is one face of creativity and includes the ability to seek new ideas though 'active curiosity'.
- Generalization and Specialization - Composing new knowledge of how needs and desires can be categorized, and how groups of people cluster in their shared motivations. This includes generalizing how technology specifications ('specs') can be elevated into the 'effects' that they produce - and which inform value judgments.
- Business Analysis - The traditional skills of modeling underlying economics, competition, and strategy to paint a picture of the living, breathing enterprise in its relevant ecosystem.
- Knowledge Transfer & Communications - The ability to craft new insight into a message that can live independent of the messenger. This includes the talent of crafting a compelling narrative and conveying in short what matters in deciding among alternatives and in taking action.
