CHAPTER 9

THE UNICORN’S ENABLING GIFTS

The unicorn’s enabling gifts are the set of characteristics that give an individual, on the one hand, the necessary structure to work effectively and successfully—know-how, culture, mindset—and, on the other, the drive and energy required to move forward in the prickly and unexplored territory typical of innovation, both in business and in life.

Unicorns Are Curious

When someone asks me where I find inspiration, my reply is always the same: I begin from inside myself. I have a natural motor of innate, insatiable, unstoppable curiosity for everything around me. Curiosity is a portal to access knowledge and an instigator for inspiration. Unicorns are curious—it’s a minimum common denominator for the tribe. Curiosity is the desire to observe, to know, to investigate, to question, simply for the sake of knowing. If you think of the etymology of the word “philosophy” (from the Greek philosophia, conjoining philein, “to love,” and sophia, “knowledge”—“the love of knowledge”), then in a certain sense curiosity is the most philosophical of the unicorn’s attributes.

Curiosity is effectively the basis for that investigation of the world typical to philosophy. Curiosity consists in approaching every conversation, interaction, and experience with eyes full of a child’s wonder, always on the lookout for the root causes that move all things, never taking anything for granted—always, constantly, incessantly asking yourself why.

The nineteenth-century Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli crystallized this sublime ability in his poetical work on the young child (il fanciullino).⁸ We all have this child inside of us in the first years of our lives, but many of us then lose this child along the way, as we grow up. This child allows us to observe the world with innocence, poetry, with a passion that is always fresh and new.

I came across Pascoli and his inner child back in 1993, at my school desk in Varese. It was an extraordinary revelation because I suddenly became fully aware of the power of the inner child in myself, and I’ve never abandoned him since. Ever since then I have celebrated, nurtured, and protected him. I nurture his curiosity, I celebrate his potential, I protect him from the erosion of the years, from the attacks of a culture that is imposed upon us, from the so-called common sense of the adults surrounding us. True curiosity, the curiosity of the inner child, is what allows you to appreciate everything around you with new eyes, constantly renewing every experience.

Have you ever seen, for example, the infinite beauty of the microcosm that we’re immersed in, the infinite variety of forms, colors, tones, and patterns that come together in nature, right in front of our eyes? Often the grains of sand on our beaches are not mere grains, but tiny shells with magnificent forms and unusual colors, losing themselves through their tiny scale, skipped over by our distracted gaze, becoming only sand and nothing else. Have you ever seen close up, perhaps with the help of the macro lens of a camera, the stupendous and unexpected colors of an ant, of a dragonfly, of a whole series of insects that live between the blades of grass, that perhaps you see but don’t really look at every day on your way to work? You don’t need large swaths of countryside to discover such wonders; even the small patch of grass in front of your house can reveal incredible surprises. Have you ever seen the elegant movements of a caterpillar or the wonderful patterns on a spider’s skin? Most of these little spiders seem all the same, all brown and black, but in fact they have the most delicate details designed by Mother Nature across their abdomens, composed in blues, yellows, oranges, greens—saturated tones, perfect definition, high resolution. And from far off, we lose sight of these masterpieces. We are blind to the beauty of the microcosm, not so much because a few feet of space stand between these creatures and ourselves, but rather because of the light years of distance artificially generated by our distracted minds. And nature is not the only place where we have this problem.

Have you ever looked up in the air while walking in the canyons of your city? New York is often lived at eye height; many of us lose the wondrous forms, generous decorations, and unexpected colors of the architecture above us. You merely need to throw a glance to the sky to have your head struck by lightning, to be excited again every day, appreciating a new detail, a new story, a new experience. And it’s simply enough to then lower your gaze and to look around you again with the same focus in order to admire a myriad of other details as clear as they are invisible to our careless eyes. Stop and look at the manholes of South Street Seaport in Manhattan, with the fish carved in bas-relief, each one thought up and designed by someone, trampled over by thousands of people every day, thousands of people who don’t even notice or appreciate these marvels. Or slow your steps down and enjoy the forms and colors of the city’s fire hydrants. A few years ago, I photographed hundreds of them, amazed by the variety of these objects that are dotted through the streets of the Big Apple. I saw dragons that cry, laugh, kiss each other, embrace each other, wink at each other. I was excited by what I discovered, so excited that I then shared the results in a series of posts on my social media platforms. I was excited by a series of fire hydrants that I had seen a thousand times before on my daily walk through the city but had never really stopped to look at with care, attention, and curiosity. I was as excited as a fanciullino—a little boy!

Our minds are sometimes lazy and sleepy, sometimes hyperactive and distracted, but when curiosity catches them they get excited, focused, feverish. Every day, we meet dozens upon dozens of different people; we pass them by, taking them for granted, without ever truly looking at them, without asking ourselves why they behave in a certain way, why they dress as they do, how they communicate. And this doesn’t just happen with passersby but all too often with our neighbors as well, with a colleague, an acquaintance. Too often, we don’t truly understand these other people; we stop at the surface, thinking that this surface is a sufficient representation of the substance beneath.

But in truth, every person is a book, a novel, full of thousands of pages, rich with images and words. And our lives are an immense and labyrinthine bookstore, where we see hundreds of different books on the shelves every day. Often—far too often—those books remain on the shelves, mere wall decorations for our existences. We look across the spines distractedly; sometimes we judge the book by its cover. Most of the time we don’t stop to check the cover or even the title; we don’t take the time to leaf through the pages, to lose ourselves in the stories they contain—surprising, touching, enlightening stories. Those books remain simply spots of color that populate our world.

Have you ever asked yourself why someone you know is shy? What is really behind that shyness? Is it just the individual’s character, perhaps a difficult past, an experience that changed the person’s life? Does this person need help? Or can this individual perhaps help us, we who sometimes are too outgoing, too extrovert, too boisterous? Why is one person kind but his brother not, despite their being raised by the same parents? Why—generally speaking—do women put on a certain kind of makeup, but men don’t? Why do we say words like “hello,” and why do we move our hands to greet each other? Why does a gesture in Italy have one meaning but in England another? Have you ever asked yourself that question typical of children—“Why?”—and then again “Why?” and yet again “Why?” It’s a very powerful technique because it allows you to get down to the roots of every kind of behavior, to grasp the origins of the most different kinds of occurrences, providing you with the tools to decipher so many other situations, experiences, approaches, and emotions. Feeling wonder before the world and always asking why, without taking anything for granted, is a precious approach I have used countless times throughout my life.

This way of thinking has not only helped me in my professional path; it’s also been of use in my private life. When someone has hurt me, disappointed me, or abandoned me, for example, I’ve always asked myself, “Why?” And when I’ve found the first response, the most superficial one, I’ve then asked myself yet again, “Why?”—and there’s another response, something deeper. And then I come again to the next “Why?” and so on, until finally I get to the real root cause. And often, in the depths of that new perspective, I have realized that the pain that’s been inflicted on me wasn’t intentional, that perhaps it was just collateral damage from an act that didn’t really concern me or that began in some other trauma or pain that had nothing to do with me. There’s an important difference between someone who harms you in a targeted and conscious way and someone instead who does so unconsciously, by accident. In the latter case, understanding, accepting, forgiving, and forgetting is much easier.

When we consider those root causes, our actions and reactions can always be channeled in a more efficient and effective way. Everything begins with this innate curiosity, this insatiable thirst to understand, to grasp, to know. Curiosity, when paired with respect and empathy, is a powerful asset in the life of anyone who wants to grow, progress, and innovate.

All the unicorns I know share this trait. Curiosity is the fertile ground where we plant the seeds of knowledge. It’s the currency used to acquire as many seeds as possible, the water that irrigates them, the fertilizer that nurtures them, the eye that sees them grow, and the body that enjoys their fruits.

Never be ashamed of your curiosity. Too many people are scared to ask, “Why?” They are in fear of demonstrating a gap in their knowledge, of exposing the fact that they haven’t already understood everything, haven’t seen everything, and still have something to learn—especially when they are in management positions or when they’ve reached some form of success in life. Wise people instead know the limits of individual knowledge. “I know I know nothing,” said the knowledgeable Socrates thousands of years ago, according to Plato. The unicorn’s only concern is not the embarrassment of showing some lack of knowledge but the eventual inability to access the knowledge of others through curious questions and dialogue. Too many people don’t understand that the prowess of asking questions with intellectual and spiritual curiosity is one of the greatest forms of intelligence. It’s a tangible expression of self-confidence and self-awareness, and it’s one of the most powerful catalysts and generators of knowledge.

Someone who isn’t curious is simply arid, infertile—a tree destined to dry up under the sun, to wither away with time and disappear. Lack of curiosity is a formidable inhibitor of innovation.

Unicorns Are Humble but Confident and Self-Aware

Unicorns have a basic humility that derives from their own inner consciousness. They are able to recognize their own limits in an honest and transparent way and to avoid falling into forms of pride. They are individuals who, when they meet people who have knowledge and abilities different from their own, do not close themselves up in the armor of their arrogance, because unicorns don’t fear the impact of that diversity on their own ego, their image, their position. Instead, they recognize the potential for growth and improvement intrinsic to the exploration of areas beyond the boundaries of their own limits and comfort zones. Unicorns are professionals who do not fall into the trap of contempt. First, it isn’t in their nature, not even on a basic level—it’s not in their DNA, not codified in their cultural matrix. Second, they understand that condescension, in all its forms, is sterile; it doesn’t procreate but instead blocks the seeds of innovation. A humble approach connects and flows, removes obstacles, breaks energy free, and opens doors, hearts, and minds.

I have met many arrogant people over the years. At first, I tended to respond by becoming irritated, thoroughly so, right down to my bones. With the passing of the years and the acquisition of some wisdom, I gratefully realized that that emotion had changed. I began to feel sorry for these people—not in a way that was arrogant in turn, but with a sincere feeling derived from understanding the extent to which these individuals were wasting their potential. When I interact with arrogant people, I can almost feel in the air the quantity of knowledge and inspiration to which they don’t have access and will never have access throughout their lives, blocked as they are by those walls of pride their weak and insecure ego is hiding behind.

On the contrary, when I have met individuals who are both successful and humble, from every kind of background—from music to design, from business to science, from movies to fashion—my heart expands, my mind opens up, my horizons broaden. They inspire me so much! It’s hard to describe. I’ve had many such encounters in New York, and it’s no accident that the city is one of the most prolific innovation laboratories in the world. I’ve found a widespread humility in this metropolis, at least in the environments I spend time in, those of innovators, entrepreneurs, and creatives—the environments of unicorns. This humility derives from self-confidence combined with the awareness of being surrounded by countless people who, in one way or another, have the potential to be more interesting, intelligent, brilliant, resourceful, wealthy, equipped, or connected than ourselves. This awareness doesn’t weaken unicorns; it deprovincializes and revitalizes them, giving them more charge, more energy, more motivation—because they don’t view such individuals and their gifts as threats but simply as a wonderful opportunity. Conscious humility is an extremely powerful tool for innovation, evolution, and progress.

Unicorns Are Attentive Listeners but Quick to Decide and Act

Unicorns know how to listen. With age, with the positions we achieve, with successes in life, we risk listening less and less. God knows how many times I have slipped up in this way myself. How many times have I shared and talked more than I have listened and absorbed? How many times have I met wonderfully brilliant people who were perhaps less eloquent than myself, and for this reason I haven’t managed to benefit from their knowledge? Some years ago, I finally understood that listening was as important as sharing. I had to force myself to listen more so that I could grow more, and faster.

From that point on, I have become increasingly intolerant of a breed of people I already didn’t understand: the ones who feel the need to speak merely to fill the empty void of their own silence, to show that they too have something to say, on any topic whatsoever, almost as if to legitimize their position during a meeting. Imagine how much deeper, more productive, stimulating, and informative all our conversations would be if we eliminated those pointless words from our society, mere mechanical stimulation of the vocal cords with no real purpose or benefit. Our words should never be redundant or an end in themselves, shared merely for the objective of showing off an opinion or justifying our presence.

Listening is a precious act. People should listen more in this world. Listening helps you to think, to reflect, to correct yourself; it makes us better. Too many people love listening to the sound of their own voice filling a room and their own insecure soul, rather than listening to other people’s content. I love listening to my teams. I have always tried to create a culture in which the designers surrounding me feel free to criticize, to disagree, to contest matters, to share their own ideas—especially when their ideas don’t coincide with my own.

But watch out: listening doesn’t mean not acting. Too many times, too many people are paralyzed by listening. They listen too much, and then they don’t act. They watch, analyze, absorb, reflect, and then don’t act. And they fall into analysis paralysis. This is a classic problem in many organizations, in which individuals use this approach to put off important decisions and delay critical activities, in the hope of running away from risks they don’t want to take, slowly drowning in overreflection and hyperaccumulation of data and insights.

Listen, observe, analyze, learn, and then, at a certain point, decide and act. And do it with adequate speed and extreme accuracy. Progress, innovation, and success are directly connected to the ability to know how to manage listening, deciding, and acting with perfect balance and timing. One of the most serious structural flaws in big enterprises is a lack of people who take on the risk of making decisions and acting on them. Action is extremely important, and the speed of that action is similarly fundamental.

I understood this sacred truth very early in life. I learned it, not from a school blackboard or in a company meeting room, but on a suburban soccer field. I understood it through a completely unexpected analogy, through a completely unlikely mental connection, transferring a sporting experience into the world of innovation. When I was just over twenty, I played on a good team, in a category just a step below the professional one. Every now and again I played against AC Milan, in training games at Milanello. Our team was made up of players who were very good at footwork; many of us had great technique, and we were well trained, with four sessions a week as well as Sunday competitions. We were also paid. In short, our approach was similar to that of a professional team. But there was a big gap between an Italian Serie A team—one of the strongest teams in the world (and I’m saying that as a Juventus fan!)—and our own team from an inferior category. There was a vast difference that can be described with two key words: “action” and “speed.” When I found myself faced with Maldini, Albertini, Costacurta, Desailly, Boban, and Weah, the speed with which they touched the ball, made a pass, moved around the pitch, and put the ball in the net was simply stunning. I don’t know whether it seemed more as though we were in slow motion or as though they were moving at double speed. They looked at the field, identified their adversaries and teammates, thought how to mark them, decided where to put the ball, and then acted, kicking the ball exponentially faster than we did, but with an extreme precision and accuracy. It was killer playing.

I remember my astonishment when I realized for the first time the importance of this variable. On that pitch in Milanello, you didn’t need a genius to understand it; it was entirely obvious to all of us, and yet, up to that point, I hadn’t understood, probably because on TV and in the stadium I hadn’t had the chance to compare the professionals in action with players who were little more than amateurs by comparison. Over the years, while reflecting on the concept of strategy, analysis, decision, action, and speed, I’ve realized that what happened on that sporting field was exactly analogous to what goes on in the world of business. The two worlds follow the same rules: the best leaders are the ones who listen, think, decide, and act with exceptional speed and perfect timing.

The innovator isn’t just someone with the right idea; the innovator is also the person who decides to act on that idea, who develops and launches it before anyone else, with the greatest efficiency and quality. The ideal company is not simply the one with the perfect strategy, but the one that adapts this strategy to evolve with the market and society, with extraordinary velocity, refined agility, and sublime timing.

Listening, deciding, and acting constitute the magic triad. Over the years, I have often made the mistake of trying to strategize more than necessary, slowing things down; I’ve also made the opposite error, of being forced to act in haste, without taking the time to listen and think things through. Finding the right balance is the gift of a great thinker, a great strategist, a great leader—and the ideal innovator. The ability to listen is a gift that we make first of all to ourselves and then to others. The ability to decide when to make decisions is an art that you refine over time and through experience. The ability to act rapidly, faster than anyone else, is a craft that you learn in the field, with training and toil, forged through both successes and failures.

Unicorns Are Optimistic and Resilient

Optimism reduces the stress produced by complexity and increases the level of individual performance. Science tells us this, but it’s also something we can feel ourselves, in our bodies, in our hearts. It’s much easier to deal with complicated situations if you have a positive outlook. In that long journey we call life, each of us is bound to find closed doors, obstacles, barriers, and difficulties of every kind. It’s part of the game. If we decide to innovate along the way, to change, to evolve, to overturn the status quo, then those barriers suddenly become even higher, thicker, harder to overcome.

If you’re making something that no one has made before, then you’re sure to face resistance. If you don’t, then it’s very likely you’re not doing anything new. But unicorns don’t give up or get discouraged. They keep on going despite everything and everyone, with a natural, organic, and permanent optimism. This optimism is the source of their energy; it’s the drive for their dreams. Dreams are their compasses and optimism the gasoline. My journey—as a designer through the strange world of business, as an innovator in the realm of mass market efficiency, as a young boy in the world of adults, and as an Italian from a simple suburban family through the high ranks of US corporations—has not been without difficulties, doors closed in my face, metaphorical punches in the stomach, whacks on the back, microaggressions, and macroambushes. Optimism, passion, resistance, and persistence have been fundamental qualities for me, allowing me to keep going without hesitating, as solid as a tank.

How many times have I gotten angry, suffered, and been disappointed by situations that have come up along the way! But then, most of the time, those emotions have gone away shortly after they arrived, in the space of a few hours or a few days, thanks to two fundamental superpowers. First is the power of optimism, which has allowed me to constantly find a positive angle in every moment, even in the deepest crisis, always managing to see the glass as half full. And second is the power of my dreams, which I hang on to tenaciously—those dreams that have always given me a route to follow and a light to aim at, even in the darkest circumstances of my life. The resilience that I have called on to face the world is the product of a magic mix between my dreams and my optimism.

When I find myself dealing with moments of particular difficulty, I use a technique to activate my inner optimism and reawaken my dreams. I take a metaphorical journey through an imagined landscape in my mind, a hill that rises up over time and events, a hill without time and events, and I look at the situation that I’m engaging in as if it were a distant valley, taking a thousand steps away, putting things in perspective. In other words, I try to visualize my pathway, remembering where I started, putting the goal on the horizon, and grasping what steps have been taken up to that point. From the vantage point of this analytic hill, through reflection and meditation, you can see everything with much greater clarity. Often we are so lost in the forest of our daily lives, tangled up in the vines of particular episodes, blocked by the mud of everyday difficulties, that we are no longer able to remember the journey we’re on; we don’t manage to appreciate with the correct perspective the road taken up until that moment, and we forget the results we have already achieved. That progress and those results give you the strength to continue with more enthusiasm than before: in that goal placed on the horizon, you find your motivation, and along that path—now seen in perspective—you find the next steps with greater lucidity. Optimism and resilience at this point are simply the results of a new awareness.

Perspective is all the more precious because it helps you to concentrate on the journey instead of on the obstacles in front of you. Once you look at things with some perspective, it becomes easier to understand how that daily obstacle, the battle that has been lost, and the unexpected defeat often don’t really represent steps backward but are actually parts of pushing onward toward the final goal. I never tire of sharing this approach with my teams, especially the younger members who often get demoralized by the new barriers and hurdles they meet along the way.

Let’s give a concrete example to explain the approach. Think of how many times you’ve driven forward an exceptional creative idea, but the idea has then been rejected by managers who lack vision or courage. Those managers have then launched to the market a compromised and mediocre version of your concept. Think now of how many times it’s then been the case that, a few months later, a competitor has arrived on the scene launching something similar to your original idea and has done so in a successful way. When something like this happens, there is a high probability that the business leaders who didn’t understand your original idea and the people around them will realize that what you were proposing was actually a winning concept. Sometimes, they will admit this directly to you; most of the time, they won’t. But they will know.

This has happened to me a few times over the past twenty-five years (and when it didn’t happen, often it was because my original idea wasn’t really as exceptional as I thought it was). For people in your organization to see that your rejected concept was a winning one has a special value. It helps you to exponentially amplify your credibility, with an even greater impact than would have been the case if your idea had been accepted and launched in the initial phase. It essentially demonstrates your ability—and that of your team—to identify creative opportunities even when your partners haven’t yet spotted them. You provide your partners with another set of eyes, complementary to theirs, giving them the chance to envision solutions that they themselves would otherwise miss.

Often, though, when in the middle of an episode that we are living as a defeat, we aren’t able to see things this way. It seems in the moment that we’re going backward, when instead we are actually advancing toward our goal. Everything just needs to be put in perspective.

Innovating in a highly complex world is like scaling Everest: From the base camp you climb up to the intermediate point. From there you don’t go up immediately but instead go back down to the base camp again, to adapt your body’s cravings for oxygen to the conditions of that extreme altitude. The next day you go up to the next point and then back down again. This is how you proceed for weeks, moving the upper point increasingly higher but doing so gradually, alternating the ascent and descent. These multiple journeys back down, from a higher base to one at a lower altitude, are the necessary steps to get to the final goal, despite the perception of regressing. Going in reverse physically is part of the holistic motion toward the final objective. But if you don’t take in the whole vision, made up of the entire journey and the final destination, then those reverse movements are experienced as simply backward motion, nothing else.

In both our private and professional lives, all those times when we think we’re not getting ahead, that we’re regressing from the steps already taken forward, we need to put things in perspective, visualizing the end goal and trying to understand how that section of difficult road—so uphill, impervious, discouraging, and incomprehensible—is in truth helping us to advance in the direction of our dreams. This transforms those moments into fragments of learning, phases of consolidation, accelerations in credibility, changing them into part of an exciting journey. From this perspective, we find energy and positivity to proceed with resilience and optimism.

Unicorns Are Comfortable with Discomfort

Unicorns are at ease in what I call suspension: they are comfortable with change, in those undefined areas that displace everything, in unexplored territory, in dimensions that are yet to be understood. When most people want a precise definition, a role and responsibility, a label and a playing field with well-defined boundaries, unicorns prefer to make their own role, to design their field of action. They love exploring virgin territory; they find comfort in constant evolution. This is far from an obvious gift, because this human instinct comes up against the shared search for stability and security, one of our primary needs; the lack of that stability and security creates discomfort for most people. It’s natural.

Like most people, I, too, have always loved certainty, stability, and the comfort of security, but I have never viewed security and stability as the final port where I can stop and sit down with ease and pleasure. Instead, for me, security and stability are platforms, springboards to leap from to reach other platforms, which in their turn are also safe and secure.

That moment of leaping into the void, suspended between one platform and the next, has always fascinated and excited me. In that leap, I taste all the air of life on my skin; I feel the adrenaline of dreams. It’s this dynamic transition that makes me feel alive. Many people fear this leap because they don’t know where they will find the landing point on the other side. If our current platform is stable and secure, it will be difficult to abandon it; if instead it’s precarious and uncertain, it will be all the simpler to take the leap.

Yet again, this is the reason that moments of great personal and professional change, such as moments of innovation for individuals, companies, and societies, often come out of great crises. It takes courage, optimism, and vision—as well as the necessary security measures and safety nets—to overcome the fear, to enjoy every moment of that jump into the sky, propelling yourself into new horizons. This is the only dynamic of innovation. This defines the ideal innovator, crystallizes what a unicorn is. There is no innovation without discomfort. We have to be at ease in that discomfort if we want to innovate.

Unicorns Are Change Agents

Unicorns are obsessed with change—not change as an end in itself, but change that is constructive, that aims at evolving the status quo in order to improve it. Unicorns’ very natures drive them to analyze the world that surrounds them and constantly ask themselves how they can redesign it to make it perfect. They are animated by a positive tension with what Plato called the world of ideas, the world of absolute perfection. And given that this perfection cannot be reached except by God—or, if you don’t believe in God, then by what God represents—innovators are destined to constantly move toward that goal, in their private and professional lives, without end. They are constantly propelled onward toward the intuition of new possibilities, toward the search for intelligent solutions, toward the idea of better worlds.

Looking back over my life, I realized some years ago that I have never had a specific goal in mind, a final and concrete objective to reach. I’ve always been switched on by a constant tension with the infinite. Whenever I reach an objective, I have been conscious of the fact that this was only a temporary step, one of the many stable and secure platforms from which to then launch myself, to fly toward the next objective, always moving the limits higher and higher, continuing along this journey toward a better condition—for me, for my teams, for my community, for the brands and organizations I’m working for. This is why I have never felt that I have truly “arrived.” This is, and will always be, a journey that doesn’t end with the next step, because that step will always look forward to the next one, constantly, continually.

In a world where any system proceeds through inertia—maintaining, in the absence of an external force acting on the system, either a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line as Newton demonstrated—I have always tried to put external forces into the system, creating discomfort and interference in the organizations where I have worked. I have always been obsessed by the idea of triggering a dynamic of constant evolution. This obsession has often been the source of both joy and pain for many of my collaborators and myself: every time we reach one of our goals, I’m already thinking about establishing a new one, higher and higher.

Unicorns are in love with meaningful change. They are agents of change, sponsors of change, because they know that change contains the seed of progress.

Design Thinking Needs More Unicorns

Unicorns, with all their attributes described in these pages, are ideal creatures. They are models to aspire to and to inspire; they are exemplars to try to emulate during the arc of our personal and professional journeys. The long list of the unicorn’s gifts deciphers an innovator’s way of thinking, deciding, and acting. In other words, this list defines the how of innovation.

What we have described as the human-centered (or design-driven) approach to innovation defines, in contrast, what the ideal innovator needs to do, in bringing together empathy, strategy, and prototyping; embracing desirability, technical feasibility, and economic viability; and being inspired by the principles of meaningful design.

In order for the human-centered approach to innovation to be successful, you need both the what and the how. You need a design-driven process, but you also need the brilliant minds and knowing hands of the unicorns. The reason that experiments in this approach to innovation often fail is that people concentrate too much on tools and processes, on the what of innovation, without equipping themselves with the how—in other words, with the right talent, possessing the right intellectual and emotional abilities to come up with the right questions, generate the right responses, and then imagine, design, and produce the right solutions.

The need for both these elements also explains why many designers in the world are not innovators, despite having been educated in design-driven innovation. The reason is that they have been trained in the what of innovation, which certainly provides an important starting point. But this training does not necessarily give you the how.

Design thinking is fundamental for doing human-centered innovation successfully, but it’s not enough. The winning innovator is someone who exploits the typical way that design thinking works, but who does so in ways that only a unicorn can. And this ability derives from a delicate mix of innate talent, on the one hand, and education and training on the other. This is a type of education that schools often can provide only in part. It’s a training that comes from living life itself, from fortuitous encounters, carefully planned meetings, lucky circumstances, personal curiosity, and the right mental attitude.