Book SummaryThe Innovator’s DNA, by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Innovator’s DNA

In today’s business environment, business leaders and companies must be innovative to stay relevant and succeed in the long term. In The Innovator’s DNA, Hal Gregersen, Jeff Dyer, and Clayton Christensen argue that anyone can learn to innovate by practicing the five skills of the most successful innovators in the world, which they distilled from years of studies and interviews with roughly 100 innovative leaders and inventors of revolutionary products.

Gregersen is a professor of leadership and innovation at MIT and a co-founder of the Innovator’s DNA consulting group. Dyer is an award-winning Professor of Strategy at Brigham Young University and a widely respected management scholar whose research has been featured in publications like Forbes, the Economist, and the Wall Street Journal. Christensen, a business researcher and consultant, is regarded as one of the [most influential business thinkers of all...

The Innovator’s DNA Summary Innovation Is Key to Success

The authors write that innovation is the key to success in today’s business environment, and the key to innovation, in turn, is creative thinking. Successful innovators don’t possess an inherent creative power that most others lack. The authors’ research found no significant difference in the psychological traits of innovative versus non-innovative thinkers. This means that creative thinking emerges from how you behave. Therefore, you can learn to think more creatively by learning to act differently.

(Shortform note: In The Magic of Thinking Big, David J. Schwartz agrees that creative thinking can be developed through behaviors (like asking questions), but he adds that your beliefs about what is possible can shut down any creative thinking before it has a chance to flourish. Beliefs unconsciously drive our behavior, therefore, if you believe something is impossible or that you’re incapable, you will shut down any creative thinking before it has a chance to lead to good ideas. To think more creatively, he recommends...

The Innovator’s DNA Summary The Five Innovation Skills

So far, we’ve discussed how crucial creative thinking is to innovation, but what exactly is creative thinking? The authors describe five behaviors and skills—what they call Discovery Skills, but we’ll call Innovation Skills—that are most likely to generate creative ideas. These are associative thinking, questioning, observing, idea networking, and experimenting. The authors say that associative thinking is the most critical skill for innovation and that questioning, observing, idea networking, and experimenting feed into this ability.

The authors emphasize two points about the Innovation Skills: 1) You don’t need to master all five skills equally to be a successful innovator. Their research showed innovators did not equally excel in all five Innovation Skills but showed strength in an average of two skills. To get the most out of your effort and time, figure out which two skills you have a natural strength in and prioritize developing those. 2) That being said, to get the most out of these skills and optimize your creative output, don’t focus solely on two skills. Instead, try to engage with all five to some degree, as they all support and build on one another.

(Shortform...

The Innovator’s DNA Summary Develop Innovative Organizations and Teams

Now that we’ve looked at the skills you must develop to become an innovator, let’s see how you can apply those skills to build and sustain innovative organizations and teams.

The leaders and founders of innovative companies shouldn't expect their employees to innovate on their own but instead help them innovate by embedding innovation into every level of their organizations—through team structures, workflows, and company mindset. Developing innovative capabilities at each level of your business is important because innovation leads to growth opportunities.

(Shortform note: Some business experts agree that investing time and thoughtful effort into your organization’s teams is important and argue further that an organization’s collective skills, abilities, and expertise—the human elements behind the scenes—are even more important to long-term success than more publicly valued aspects of a business, like its innovation reputation or technology. Collective organizational skills and capabilities are more stable, unique, and harder to...

Shortform Exercise: Practice Associative Thinking for Creative Business Insights

Associative thinking is the heart of innovative thinking. The following exercises will help you practice your associative thinking skills and learn how to apply creative insights to real-world business challenges and opportunities.

Pick a random object from your current surroundings, such as a pencil or a coffee mug. Spend two minutes brainstorming a list of at least ten different associations or connections that come to mind when you think about that object. For example, if you picked a coffee mug, you might think of associations like "coffee, tea, warmth, relaxation, conversation, or morning routine.”