Legal Research

Types of Innovators

I liked Dave Pollard's post on types of innovators and experimenters:

He encourages a culture of experimentation using these styles:

- collaborators: they don't do anything alone
- facilitators and coaches: they help others to learn and discover how to do things better
- demonstrators: more than just communicators, they show how it works and what it means
- ideators: they imagine what's possible, and tell stories to bring those ideas to life
- innovators: they take those good ideas and realize them, make them real
- researchers: they study what's been done, in nature, by other cultures and communities, and what's needed, and spread that knowledge
- connectors: they bring people together who were meant to work together
- model-builders: they design and build something that can be understood, replicated and adapted by others
- founders: they start new things -- enterprises, communities, different ways to do important things; they build something new rather than criticizing what exists.

I've been talking about pilots and trials and experiments for years rather than abstractly studying things to death to move our enterprises forward. Releasing the energy in our staff and not "betting the enterprise" on potentially too risky initiatives and doing enough experimenetation rather than just the BIG ONE, seems like a thoughtful approach.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 13, 2008 (boomark / email).