What do innovators do?

What do innovators do? Or rather, what do ‘successful’ innovators do differently to the rest of humanity that sets them apart? It’s important to break down the notion of a successful innovator here. Within that category are brilliant scientists whose insightful breakthroughs open up new fields of opportunity. But there are also the business leaders, campaigners, politicians and educators, who enable those insights to reach a wider audience and gain real traction in a wider world. There are fundamentally different types of innovation, of which we’ll say more elsewhere in the course, and different types of innovator. Can you sensibly compare artistic innovators like Pablo Picasso, as the inventor of cubism, with Ada Lovelace and the invention of computer programming?

On many levels, no, it’s easier to find all manner of specific differences. Equally, for almost every singular habit possessed by a successful innovator, it’s also easy to see those same individual habits used by large chunks of the rest of humanity who’ve never been credited with an invention. Nonetheless, there are a cluster of habits which seem to show up again and again amongst those people we identify as innovators. ‘Curiosity.’ Common to all innovators is a curiosity about at least one, and usually many, fields of enquiry that drives their activity. Innovators are willing to dig where others do not and willing to explore the potential offered up by the failures that befall them.

When Wilson Greatbach put the wrong electronic component in his heart rhythm recorder, he was curious enough about what happened next to realise he’d taken the first steps towards creating the electrical pacemaker. ‘Note-taking.’ Many, many recognised creatives, including artists, comedians, musicians, architects, engineers and scientists, take copious notes. They record their experiences and then revisit them to spot patterns, trends, find insights, only identifiable in hindsight. Their everyday epiphanies don’t get forgotten, they stack up and new insights emerge. ‘Networks.’ Many innovators can credit their networks. They knew the right person, at the right time, or had access to the right resources, to make something happen.

The biography of many of the current era’s technology entrepreneurs includes references to having early access and encouragement to engage with computers and programming when it was still in its infancy. ‘Persistence.’ Thomas Edison was once challenged that he had gained nothing from a huge amount of work he had sunk into a particular problem. His response to that challenge is illuminating in regards to many successful innovators. ‘Why man I’ve got lots of results, I know several thousand ways that don’t work!’ Tolerating failure as an expected and even necessary part of innovation is critical. But surviving all that failure requires persistence. Bringing new ideas to life is not easy or we’d all be doing it more often.

In many ways that bloody-minded willingness to keep trying is the most important factor in innovation. New ideas are often counter intuitive, silly or disruptive to the status quo and hence they are not easily found, and even then they’re resisted. So innovators are not alike by any means, they’re certainly not all elderly white men, but they do share some common habits that we can all draw upon.