Innovator Mindset

About Dennis Stauffer

Innovation Expert, Independent Researcher, Author

The Innovator’s Secret Weapon – Empathy Part 2

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Personal Innovation Skills|

How good are you at putting yourself into someone else's shoes? When you have an innovative idea, it's your responsibility to enable them to "get it." It's your challenge. And if you don’t have the empathy and the patience to help others see what you see, then you will likely fail to win the support you need...

The Innovator’s Secret Weapon – Empathy

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Personal Innovation Skills|

The ability to see things through your customers’ eyes is definitely not something everyone can do. Some, like Steve Jobs, have been quite good at it. Others, like Netflix, completely missed the mark. How well do you really understand and empathize with your customers? How do you know?

Ten Lessons Innovators Can Learn from Fishers

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Personal Innovation Skills|

For fishers and innovators, the critical capability isn’t knowing how to fish or having all the answers; it’s knowing how to go about finding the fish and discovering the answers we need. There are a number of important lessons about innovation that can be taken from fishing. Continuing my last post...

Innovation Essentials: A Fishing Analogy

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Personal Innovation Skills, Uncategorized|

Permit me to draw an analogy between fishing and innovation, one that I think provides some important insights. We’ve all heard the old saw about giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish. But there’s an added level of expertise that goes beyond teaching someone to fish—and it’s the same kind of expertise that innovation requires.

An Innovation Lesson From American Idol

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Personal Innovation Skills, Uncategorized|

Singing is one of those skills that is difficult to evaluate in ourselves. We rely on feedback from others to determine how we’re doing. (Think of American Idol.) The personal capacity to innovate is a lot like that. It’s difficult to gain an accurate sense of our own creativity or analytical skills or insight. How often have you seen people either discount their creativity or exaggerate it? It’s quite common…and not just in singing competitions.

Avoiding Innovation Arrogance

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Uncategorized|

Expertise in the field of innovation, like any other expertise, can frequently become a hindrance to further progress. We get comfortable with what we know, what’s worked for us in the past, secure in the knowledge that has already brought us success—along with personal status and influence and income.

A Different Kind of Innovation Process Improvement

2017-04-10T21:46:57-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Uncategorized|

We know from extensive research that idea generation can be enhanced—sometimes dramatically—by the in-the-room strategies that are employed. We’ve learned how to leverage our creativity by getting people to think in certain ways (and stop thinking in certain ways), by adopting a certain mindset, a mindset that produces measurably better outcomes. But what about the mindset outside the room? The same level of creativity and spontaneity, of improvisation and exploration that fuels those ideas in the first place, is needed throughout the innovation cycle...and is often lacking.

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