To see what kind of innovator you are, try our free, 8–10 minute Innovation Style & Discovery Skills Audit: you will get a discovery-capability score (out of 100), your innovation style, a combined innovator profile, and the program direction that fits you best.
Most organizations look for innovation in the wrong place: in "creative people." The classic research by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen, published in Harvard Business Review, says something different. What sets the most innovative leaders apart is not innate talent but five discovery behaviours they practise regularly: questioning, observing, networking, experimenting, and associating.
The managerial message is both reassuring and demanding: innovation can be learned. You do not need to hire the "right personality type" to make your team more innovative — you need to build routines for these behaviours.
Two different questions. The first is style: how do you prefer to solve a problem — by improving what exists, or by rethinking the frame? The second is behaviour: which discovery habits do you actually practise? Someone with a more adaptive style can be highly innovative if they consistently observe customers and run fast experiments. Conversely, a "radical" thinker who only generates ideas and never tests them can be ineffective.
Teams stall precisely when they confuse the two. More cautious (adaptive) colleagues see innovators as reckless; innovators see them as blockers. Mature teams convert that tension into sharper problem definition, more disciplined experiments, and better scaling decisions.
The good news: style is a preference, but skills are a routine. More questions, more field observation, more diverse inputs, faster tests, and stronger analogies — all of these can be built.
To see what kind of innovator you are, try our free, 8–10 minute Innovation Style & Discovery Skills Audit: you will get a discovery-capability score (out of 100), your innovation style, a combined innovator profile, and the program direction that fits you best.
Note: This is a developmental tool inspired by Kirton's Adaption-Innovation tradition and the Innovator's DNA work — it is not the official KAI or Innovator's DNA assessment.
→ Take the audit, then book a 30-minute Innovation Briefing.
Source: The Innovator's DNA, Harvard Business Review