“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.”

Albert Einstein, scientist

If you go to a job interview, you can expect to be asked what you know about the company and why you want to work there. But if you get interviewed by Hugh Bishop, chairman of communications agency Meteorite, you are almost certain to be asked, ‘Tell me about your journey to work.’

It’s not so much of a question as a request, but let’s go with it. So how would you reply?

You might say that you usually leave at 7.50 to get the 8.14 train. Perhaps you’ve figured out the best spot on the platform to wait to get a seat on the train. Maybe you prefer the other end of the platform, to get out of the station as quickly as possible. On the way, you usually grab a tall latté from Starbucks before getting to your desk moments before 9 o’clock.

Or is your journey to work different every day? Sometimes you take the train but occasionally the bus so you can watch the world from a different vantage point. You may leave for work a lot earlier than you need to. That way, you get to explore uncharted parts of town, to discover quirky new cafés, admire the architecture that so many others take for granted or take a stroll through the park on a sunny day.

These two very different approaches to travelling to work illustrate both ends of the Inquisitiveness continuum. People who have High-Inquisitiveness are curious and creative, but perhaps a bit distracted by the next idea, which means that they may not always follow through. People who have Low-Inquisitiveness are pragmatic and good at getting jobs done, but could perhaps be a bit more creative.

Neither one is better than the other. The very best people combine creativity with pragmatism, ideas with follow-through. So how do you stack up on Inquisitiveness?

What kind of person are you?

You can often see differences in Inquisitiveness from an early age. A friend of mine is father to identical twins Alexander and Tobias. Despite being born with the same genetic blueprint, they are already – at the age of ten – exhibiting clear differences in how they behave.

Visiting them one Sunday, I watched Alex spend the afternoon playing with his carpentry set. Toby started drawing a dog they had seen earlier in the park, but then lost interest and ran off to play football before asking if we could play a card game called Yu-Gi-Oh. That game lasted all of 15 minutes before he decided that he was going to make a wooden dog. After a couple of hours, Alex presented me with a charming wooden airplane that he had lovingly sawn and hammered and sanded down. Toby had nothing to show for his efforts, but he’d had fun!

Toby strikes me as being a High-Inquisitiveness child. He has many interests and delights in them all, but has a short attention span and gets distracted easily. Alex strikes me as being a Low-Inquisitiveness child. He has fewer interests, has the ability to concentrate on a task for a long time and enjoys turning his ideas into reality.

A jack of all trades, master of none or jack of few trades, master of one. Which are you?

The Low-Inquisitiveness person: down-to-earth and reliable

You’re a practical, sensible person and often the voice of reason in a group. You prefer to deal with facts and figures than concepts and possibilities. You don’t have the time for airy-fairy ideas. You want to have answers rather than debate questions.

In fact, you probably get a bit frustrated by people who have their heads up in the clouds. They talk about amazing ideas, but you know from experience that their words rarely get turned into actions. You want to understand how an idea will help you to do your job better right now. If it doesn’t translate into a tool, a product, a service that you can use now or soon, you’d rather not waste too much time thinking about it.

You don’t set out to destroy others’ ideas, but you do want to know how they will help you. What are the benefits? How is it useful? What does it mean in practical terms?

You prefer to get on with a task rather than ponder or debate endlessly the best way of doing it. In fact, you have a phenomenal gift for getting things done. While some others are still debating concepts and ideas, you’ve rolled your sleeves up and are getting on with it. You don’t get distracted by ‘What if … ?’ questions. If there’s a problem, you look to see what’s worked in the past. You draw on past experience and tried-and-tested solutions. If it worked on a previous occasion, it may work this time too. Why reinvent the wheel?

The High-Inquisitiveness person: blue skies and outside the box

If there was such a job as the CCO (Chief Creativity Officer), that’d be you.

You’re a curious, imaginative, ingenious, big-picture person who yearns to understand how everything works. Some people say that curiosity killed the cat, but you’d rather be dead than stop asking questions. You enjoy soaking up new ideas and you’re probably the kind of person who loves to dream, to ask, ‘What if … ?’ You find it maddening when people ask a question and want only a single answer. You delight in thinking about what could be rather than being bound by what is or what happened in the past.

You have a formidable knack for taking ideas from different worlds and bringing them together in interesting and enlightening ways. You can connect concepts that others may see as unrelated and see patterns where others see only confusion. You can always be depended on to bring fresh perspectives to a discussion. To devise original solutions to old problems and come up with new, sometimes smoking-hot, ideas. Some of your colleagues or the people around you may sometimes think your ideas a bit wild and crazy, but that’s because they don’t have your imagination.

You know that you have a short attention span. You get bored easily and you’d hate to do just one thing for the rest of your life. You have so many interests – among them you’re probably a fan of classical music, opera, poetry and art. You feel that there is so much deliciousness in the world for you to do and experience. If only there were enough time to do it all!

Make the most of yourself – for Low-Inquisitiveness people

You thrive in work and life when you spend most of your time on practical matters rather than abstract ideas and fanciful possibilities. So learn that you will succeed and feel most fulfilled when you find that sweet spot.

Make good choices in your work and life. Don’t try to compete with those pretentious types with their heads in the clouds. I will tell you in the rest of this section that creativity has value – a lot of value sometimes. But working with concepts, theories and new ideas should be the extra little something that helps you to be more successful, rather than the way you spend the bulk of your time.

Ensure you can spend a significant chunk of your time as a doer, in being hands-on and applying the skills you have. Do that and you’ll be not only satisfied but productive too.

Be ready to think outside the box

“The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress.”

Trevor Bayliss, inventor

I used to work with someone, a fellow psychologist, who was extremely high on Inquisitiveness. Sebastian was the go-to guy if you were wrestling with a problem and needed creative inspiration. His ideas were often a little too quirky or entirely out of this world, but no one could doubt his inventiveness.

One day he announced that he was quitting. His decision sent shock waves around the company because he had been both popular and good at his job. He was going to set up a company to offer psychology-based coaching over the Internet. We thought he’d finally lost his marbles. Psychology via a computer screen? How on earth would that work? Even as the bosses waved him goodbye, they privately muttered that it would never work. His venture would be a flop, he’d be begging for his job back.

But his company, The Mind Gym, took off and is an enormous hit. A transatlantic success story with hundreds of employees that has trained tens of thousands of people.

Being down-to-earth and practical may get you through a lot of situations in life. If there’s a problem, you probably know the right way to deal with it. Doing the same as you’ve always done may not be enough though – you could get caught in a deep mental rut. Sometimes you need a novel approach to give you that competitive edge. Yes, we’re talking about ways to see the world through fresh perspectives, applying your knowledge in original ways and becoming more creative, innovative, even occasionally revolutionary. Want to know how?

Stuff more into your brain

“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”

William Plomer, novelist

Ever wondered what would happen if you threw a shoe or an iPod into a blender? No? The website www.willitblend.com has videos showing a household blender chopping and shredding everything from a Rubik’s cube to a cola can. Some people ask, ‘Why on earth would they want to do that?’ But why not?

People who are naturally high on Inquisitiveness ask, ‘Why not?’ They constantly explore the world, poke their noses into anything and everything, and process it all with a sense of wonderment.

Breakthrough ideas are often merely old ideas put together in different ways – happy accidents. They often turn out to be existing thoughts and concepts but assembled from seemingly unconnected spheres, crunched together in an as yet unseen fashion or taken to illogical but creative conclusions. And you can learn to do this too.

In the same way that lifting weights can turn scrawny biceps into bulging ones, you can beef up your creativity. You can establish new pathways in your brain that allow you to make fresh associations and see new patterns in the world.

‘Anything can be an inspiration. I take photographs and notes of everything around me, such as the logos and stickers I see on vans, exhibitions of flower displays and mixed fabric collages and modern art sculptures created by local college students,’ says Emma Leah Jones, owner of virtual assistant and business support company My Little Angel.

Speaking personally, I keep track of words and phrases that I like. Some of them currently include: alchemy, harrowing, forgo, impasse, rife, ruckus and death-defying. I don’t know how I might use them, but logging experiences and words helps my brain to register them and maybe exploit them at a later date. And you can do the same for your brain with words, images, smells or textures that you come across.

Composer John Cage once said, ‘I think people who are not artists often think artists are inspired. But if you work at your art, you don’t have time to be inspired. Out of the work comes the work.’ So there you go. Creativity doesn’t come from mere inspiration – it comes from putting in the work.

Enhance your creativity one step at a time

A client in the advertising industry once said to me, ‘Doing things the same way sacrifices future possibilities, the chance that something could be better or even wonderful.’

I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly guilty of getting stuck in the same old routine. From how I get ready for work and the journey I take to the office, to the way I exercise at the gym and my favourite restaurants for dinner. I have routines that mean I don’t need to think too hard. I can coast on autopilot. This is, of course, terrible for creativity. No new stimuli means no new thoughts!

One of the best ways to enhance your creativity is to try fresh ideas and experiences. In fact, just try out one idea a week. It doesn’t have to be anything earth-shattering to begin with. I’m not suggesting you move out of your home and live in a grass hut. Merely change one of your daily rituals and routines.

Perhaps buy a different newspaper for a week. Have an apple instead of a biscuit with your mid-morning coffee. Listen to classical music if you’re more into chart hits. Get up an hour earlier or take a different route to work for a week.

Start with small changes and move on to larger ones. Mix things up and see how even small alterations can affect how you see the world.

One idea a week makes for 52 ideas in a year. You can do that, can’t you?

Move on to bigger leaps of creativity too

Making small changes in your life should only be a start. How about exploring a handful of occasional, bigger ventures too? Artists and designers don’t sit in a room waiting for inspiration to strike. High-Inquisitiveness people throw themselves into new experiences, tastes, settings and situations to fuel their imagination. It’s the difference between reading about dolphins and swimming with them, splashing around with and experiencing it up close.

Perhaps take a drive to visit a country pub you’ve never been to. Go to an exhibition or gallery even though you know it’s not your usual thing and try to imagine what the artist felt. Visit a toy shop and pick up a handful of toys, asking yourself what’s distinctive about them – their texture, the technical features, the emotional associations. Or ask a friend to introduce you to a hobby or sport you’ve never tried – it could be anything from online computer gaming to horse riding. Doesn’t matter what it is, so long as you’re expanding your awareness of what else is out there.

Consume and collect experiences, not things. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychology professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, has found from his research that ‘creativity generally involves crossing the boundaries of domains’.

By adjusting your daily patterns, you help your brain to cross those boundaries and make new associations. You never know when a great idea may pop into your head. But the more you experience and experiment, the more likely it is that you’ll get that creative flash.

Soon you may find yourself using ideas from the domains of agriculture, music or anthropology to further your productivity at work. Or you might use psychology, art or animal husbandry to become a better parent. And so it goes on.

The key is to mix it up. Keep experimenting and see what works.

Create bigger problems for yourself

Here’s an idea a client shared with me: ‘Whenever my team is facing a problem, I always say, “That’s not a big enough problem. How can we make this problem bigger?”’

I liked his idea and I’ve used it a lot since then.

Suppose an engineer poses the question, ‘How can we make the internal combustion engine more efficient?’ That focuses the other engineers on incremental improvements – tweaks – that may eke out an additional few percentage points of efficiency.

Or we could make the problem bigger and ask, ‘How can we get a family from A to B for the lowest cost possible?’ That gives the members of the team wider scope to deploy their creativity. They could consider ideas such as building electric cars, solar-powered cars, cars with mini fusion reactors, cars that run on tramlines or float like plastic pods on monorails, even sleds, bikes, helicopters and flying machines.

Sure, some of the ideas might be crazy, but some might be precisely what you need. After all, when Henry Ford built the first mass-produced car, most people at the time thought he was crazy. They sneered and said, ‘The car will never replace the horse-drawn cart!’

History is filled with examples of people who asked bigger, different questions.

Back in the golden age of radio, engineers asked the question, ‘How can we reduce interference so that listeners can hear crisper, clearer music and speech?’ One engineer took an idea to his bosses for a radio that also included pictures. They dismissed the idea, arguing that it wasn’t what they were looking for. So he took it to their competitor RCA, and they built the first working prototype of a television set. Rather than asking, ‘How can we better entertain people using the radio?’ he asked, ‘How can we better entertain people?’

Supermarket giant Tesco didn’t settle by asking, ‘How can we sell more groceries?’ It asked, ‘How can we make more money?’ Now it sells everything from mobile phones and flat-screen TVs to children’s shoes and pet insurance.

So rather than asking, ‘How can we make our product sell better?’ ask, ‘What can we make that would sell better?’ Don’t ask, ‘How can I write this report more quickly?’ ask, ‘How can I get out of writing this report?’ Same goes for ‘How can I get my boss to give me more interesting projects?’ – ask instead, ‘What kind of interesting projects do I want – whether they’re at this company or not?’

Big problems may not always lead to big breakthroughs. But I’m willing to bet that little problems never do. Before you invest your energies in finding the right solution to a quandary, give a little thought instead to how you can make the whole situation go away.

Aim for quantity of ideas and you’ll get quality too

When we consider ways to solve a problem, the first idea we come up with is rarely the most creative. We’re not going to win awards for it. The late Linus Pauling, who did win awards (a Nobel Prize for chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize), argued that science is about coming up with lots of ideas and then discarding the ineffective ones.

Quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive. By coming up with a greater number of ideas, you may often surprise yourself with their quality too. When was the last time you considered 20 different ways to tackle a problem?

Yes, I’m talking about brainstorming.

OK, I admit it. Brainstorming gets a bad rep. Low-Inquisitiveness people often hate it, rolling their eyes at the mere thought of having ‘yet another brainstorm’. You may feel that you could be doing things rather than tossing ideas around. The problem is that people often end up restricting themselves to ideas that seem ‘sensible’, basing their ideas on what worked in the past.

There’s a famous saying: ‘If you always do what you’ve done before, don’t be surprised when you get the same result.’ If every idea has to be both sensible and have worked in the past, how will we ever come up with new products or original inventions?

Whether you’re brainstorming with a group or brainstorming on your own, it works. I know it’s an established technique and you already know the basic rules, but I’ll give you a few twists on the classic method to make sure you get more out of your brainstorming sessions.

Kids get it right. They’re not afraid to ask so-called ‘stupid’ questions because they think the answers are obvious. A big part of brainstorming effectively and becoming more creative is learning to interrogate the world with the innocence and naivety of a child again.

So get used to brainstorming, freewheeling, throwing around crazy ideas and seeing who can come up with the wildest ones. Only when you have a big fat pile of far-out ideas should you review them, see how they might work and choose a handful to take forward.

Take brainstorming to the n^th level

Brainstorming has been around for decades. But that’s good news as a lot of very smart psychologists, economists and business school professors have studied the technique to see how to get great results. Here are three easy-to-use ideas to throw into the mix, either singly or perhaps together.

Introduce constraints

You’d think that having rules or constraints would reduce creativity, but that’s not how our brains work. Our poor brains can’t cope with too much information. There are literally an infinite number of ideas out there and, when there are no limits, our brains can’t decide what to focus on. So they shut down, becoming less creative. Use the following examples to inspire your own brainstorming constraints:

• ‘Only products that we can sell for less than £200.’
• ‘Only services that we can aim at women.’
• ‘Only products that we can sell online.’
• ‘Only improvements that we can make by the end of the week.’
• ‘Only ideas that our grandparents would understand.’

Introduce time pressure

Do you work better when you know there’s no deadline or when the pressure’s on? Most people get that little bit more fired up when there’s an element of time pressure. And they’re no different when it comes to brainstorming.

Avoid saying, ‘We can spend as much time on this as we need.’ Instead, give people a cut-off: ‘We’ve only got 15 minutes to brainstorm. Once our time’s up, we’ll choose our top three ideas. The clock’s ticking – let’s start!’

Make it a contest

Do you like to win? Even if you don’t, I’ll bet you know someone who does. So introduce an element of competition into your brainstorming.

Split your group into smaller groups of perhaps two or three people. Tell them that the winner will be the group that comes up with the greatest number of ideas. Offer a small prize or just make it a competition for competition’s sake. Then set a time limit and watch the creative sparks fly.

Make the most of yourself – for High-Inquisitiveness people

You feel most alive when you get to be creative. So you will succeed when you recognise this gift and play to your strengths. Make sure that your work and life allow you plenty of opportunities to consider possibilities and throw around ideas.

Perhaps your current situation isn’t giving you enough space to create at the moment, but look to the future. Steer clear of jobs and circumstances that require you to get mired in detail and routine – no matter how well intentioned or well paid such opportunities might be. Remember, when you’re considering a change in your life, a new job, settling down with a new partner, a fresh project, whatever, that you get bored easily. Ask yourself, ‘Will this situation allow me to create, inspire, wonder and be myself most – or at least some – of the time?’

Consider the flip-side of creativity

Let’s face it. Some of your ideas are kissed by genius – they’re that good. But that strength comes with an attendant weakness.

A friend of mine, Christina, exemplifies High-Inquisitiveness. She’ll send an email to a dozen friends saying that she’s found a stunning new restaurant and she’d like to get us all together for dinner, but she never follows up. She once sent me an email asking for my waist size. I’m sure she’d had some flash of inspiration, but I never found out what it was. Having read about Dubai in the Middle East and how you can camp in the desert under the stars, she suggested that a group of us go there to bring in the New Year. Yes, you guessed it, it never happened. And it drives most of us, her friends, crazy!

The same goes for the world of work too. Micael Dahlén, professor of business administration and marketing strategy at the Stockholm School of Economics, defines business creativity as ‘the concrete development of products’. I added the emphasis to the word ‘concrete’. No point having great ideas unless they get turned into reality. Unless they result in actual products or services, tools or improvements to the way you work and live.

You’re a dreamer, a visionary, a powerhouse of creativity. But consider the flip-side. If you spend too much of your time in the world of ideas, you risk becoming someone who ‘talks a good game’, but never delivers. So here are a handful of ways to make sure that you can have your head in the clouds and your feet firmly on the ground.

Learn to recycle

“We must beware of needless innovation.”

Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister

Let’s go back 50 years. To the early days of the space race when both the Americans and Russians were trying to be the first to get into space and then to the moon. Apparently, both sides spent a lot of time wondering what the most suitable writing instrument would be to take into orbit. NASA spent millions of dollars crafting a ‘space pen’. The Russians just packed pencils.

OK, that may be an urban myth, but you get the point. Why reinvent the wheel when it gets the job done? Sometimes ‘good enough’ will do. You don’t need to aim for astonishing solutions to mundane problems.

Take software programmers. A friend tells me that computer programmers often have to decide whether to reuse code from a previous project or craft something new. Novice programmers often start from scratch every time, which works for small projects. But experienced programmers learn to build on the efforts of others rather than reinventing everything all over again. The final solution may not be as elegant, but a software team can get there more quickly and for less cost than if they’d done it all themselves.

The same may be true of business in general. I was recently on a BBC TV programme with Theo Paphitis, a ‘dragon’ from the popular Dragons’ Den show. He said, ‘I’ve never had an original idea in my life.’ He argued that you don’t necessarily need to do anything different from your competitors; you only need to do it better. He emphasised that executing what you know may often deliver better results than chasing the next idea. It’s worked for him – he’s the multimillionaire chairman of stationery chain Ryman and owns stakes in lingerie chain La Senza and gift company Red Letter Days.

The lesson is this: consider the perpetual trade-off between creativity and economy. Developing something new and amazing doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes merely tweaking what you’ve already got may be good enough. Don’t fall into the trap of being constantly creative for creativity’s sake.

Take people with you

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”

Howard Aiken, computer pioneer

Having a brain that’s like a hothouse of creativity, you see possibilities and futures that others may consider too far-flung. You jump from A to Z with no steps in between. Problem is, the people around you may not be so quick to follow.

An executive I coached once said, ‘I do the dreamy stuff. If others can’t pick it up and make it happen, that’s not my problem, is it?’

‘Actually,’ I told him, ‘it is your problem.’ A great idea isn’t much use if people don’t adopt it. The best idea in the world can get left behind, forgotten, if people don’t understand how to use it and why they should use it. And if that happens, you may as well never have had the brainchild in the first place. When selling your ideas, your main challenge is helping your less inquisitive buddies and colleagues to relate to your high concepts.

You need persistence to get new ideas to stick, because you’re fighting people’s natural inertia. Most people find it easier to make do with what they already know, how they’ve always been doing things, than to do something different. Simply stating an idea once won’t be enough to get everyone rushing around in anticipation of how it could transform their lives.

If you want an idea to flourish, you have to share it. Get people involved so that they aren’t just knowledgeable about the workings of your idea but fired up about it too. Convert them into supporters to back you up in meetings, advocates who will speak up for your ideas when you’re not there and sponsors to throw their time and resources behind you.

And that’s only the beginning. People fall back into old habits so easily. So you need to hold their hands, answer their questions, keep reminding them of the benefits. Then remind them some more.

And don’t underestimate how much patience you will need, how much detail you may need to go into. I’ll give you an example. Most people know that they should do more exercise and eat healthily, right? But those same people don’t do these things because they’re used to the path of least resistance – sitting on the sofa and eating ready meals. They need to be shown what kinds of exercises they should be doing, how often and how strenuous. They need to be told how to read food labels and cook food that’s healthy and the kids will enjoy. And then they need to be encouraged, gently prodded, nudged and reminded some more.

Ideas don’t speak for themselves. You have to speak up for your ideas, market them, even hype them a little. Having an idea is only the start of the journey; make sure that you can complete the trip by turning your idea into something that people can use.

Partner up

Grrr! Do Low-Inquisitiveness people frustrate you? They’re so cautious of breakthrough ideas, experiences and ways of working. They want to do things as they’ve always been done. Even when you present them with fresh ideas, they get snarled up in the details rather than seeing the bigger picture. Truth is, you probably think of them as uninspired, dull, lacking in imagination.

All the same, they can be the perfect people to offset your mentally agile nature.

This was the challenge when I worked one-on-one with Paul, a media executive. Paul was responsible for creating new concepts and formats for television programmes. Everyone recognised that he had great ideas, but he had a patchy track record when it came to pitching ideas to TV channels. This meant that few of his programmes were ever made. He was told that his ideas weren’t thought through properly. That he didn’t think about how much it would cost, how long it would take, who needed to be involved, how it would happen.

So he simply decided to stop pitching ideas. He gave that responsibility to one of his colleagues, Annette, who wasn’t known for her creativity. But she could ask Paul the difficult questions, forcing him to articulate more clearly what was only half-formed in his head. She could put budgets together, work out shooting schedules, give clear and concise presentations to TV chiefs, and coordinate the rest of the activities that Paul couldn’t. A match made in heaven.

Perhaps opposites do attract – or at least can complement each other’s preferences and skills.

Who would your perfect partner be?

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Remember that the personality dimension Inquisitiveness is a continuum. Neither end of the spectrum is innately more desirable than the other. People who may be too high on it may be creative yet a little detached from reality. People who are too low may be grounded but sometimes lacking in imagination. The ideal is to bridge the divide between the creativity of High-Inquisitiveness and the pragmatism of Low-Inquisitiveness – between imagining and doing.

Here’s a quick summary of words and phrases that broadly distinguish Low-Inquisitiveness from High-Inquisitiveness. As you can see, both profiles have strengths and shortcomings.

Low-Inquisitiveness	High-Inquisitiveness
Enjoy being pragmatic doers.	Enjoy being visionary dreamers.
Ask, ‘How is this going to work?’	Ask, ‘What if … . ?’
Tend to be detail-orientated	Focus on the big picture.
Have fewer interests but greater depth.	Have many interests but little depth.
May be perceived as lacking imagination.	May be perceived as lacking follow-through.
Best at execution – turning ideas into reality.	Best at exploration – coming up with ideas.

If you scored lower on Inquisitiveness:

• Appreciate that what has worked in the past may not always be good enough in the future. Hard work isn’t enough on its own to get ahead. In a rapidly changing world, you need both good ideas and hard work.
• Remember, creativity is a habit that can be nurtured. Make time in your schedule to explore the world and expose yourself to fresh experiences, capturing and documenting them as you go to encourage your brain to absorb them.
• Introduce occasional brainstorming sessions or set your sights on solving bigger problems than the one you appear to be faced with. Many breakthroughs come from looking at the bigger picture or considering notions that at first seem outrageous.

If you scored higher on Inquisitiveness:

• Remember, no one has reinvented the wheel for good reason. Fight your natural urge to recreate everything. Ask yourself, ‘Is there anything that I can use or adapt rather than create something from scratch?’
• Recognise that innovation requires equal parts of exploration (coming up with ideas) and exploitation (turning ideas into reality). You’re hot on exploration; not so hot on exploitation. Be sure to share your ideas, repeat the message and be patient in ensuring that they are adopted. Ideas that aren’t used may as well not exist.
• Find people around you who are formidable on implementation. Play to each other’s strong points – you focus on the visionary stuff; allow others to make it happen.