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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
The Five Discovery Skills That Enable Innovative Leaders to “Think Different”
Excerpted from
The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
By
Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen
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Harvard Business Review Press Boston, Massachusetts
ISBN-13: 978-1-4221-8373-1
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Copyright 2011 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved
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This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators,
copyright 2011 Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen.
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1
The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
—Steve Jobs, founder and CEO,
Apple Inc.
DO I KNOW HOW to generate innovative, evendisruptive, business ideas? Do I know how to find creative people or how to train people to think outside the
box? These questions stump most senior executives, who know
that the ability to innovate is the “secret sauce” of business success.
Unfortunately, most of us know very little about what makes one
person more creative than another. Perhaps for this reason, we
stand in awe of visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple’s Steve Jobs,
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, and innovative
executives like P&G’s A. G. Lafley, Bain & Company’s Orit Gadiesh,
and eBay’s Meg Whitman. How do these people come up with
groundbreaking new ideas? If it were possible to discover the inner
1
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
workings of the masters’ minds, what could the rest of us learn
about how innovation really happens?
Ideas for Innovation
Consider the case of Jobs, who was recently ranked the world’s
number-one best-performing CEO in a study published by
Harvard Business Review.1 You may recall Apple’s famous “Think
Different” ad campaign, whose slogan says it all. The campaign
featured innovators from different fields, including Albert Einstein,
Picasso, Richard Branson, and John Lennon, but Jobs’s face might
easily have been featured among the others. After all, everyone
knows that Jobs is an innovative guy, that he knows how to think
different. But the question is, just how does he do it? Indeed, how
does any innovator think different?
The common answer is that the ability to think creatively is ge-
netic. Most of us believe that some people, like Jobs, are simply
born with creative genes, while others are not. Innovators are sup-
posedly right brained, meaning that they are genetically endowed
with creative abilities. The rest of us are left brained—logical,
linear thinkers, with little or no ability to think creatively.
If you believe this, we’re going to tell you that you are largely
wrong. At least within the realm of business innovation, virtually
everyone has some capacity for creativity and innovative thinking.
Even you. So using the example of Jobs, let’s explore this ability to
think different. How did Jobs come up with some of his innovative
ideas in the past? And what does his journey tell us?
Innovative Idea #1: Personal Computers
Should Be Quiet and Small
One of the key innovations in the Apple II, the computer that
launched Apple, came from Jobs’s decision that it should be quiet.
His conviction resulted, in part, from all the time he’d spent
2
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
studying Zen and meditating.2 He found the noise of a computer
fan distracting. So Jobs was determined that the Apple II would
have no fan, which was a fairly radical notion at the time. Nobody
else had questioned the need for a fan because all computers
required a fan to prevent overheating. Getting rid of the fan
wouldn’t be possible without a different type of power supply that
generated less heat.
So Jobs went on the hunt for someone who could design a new
power supply. Through his network of contacts, he found Rod
Holt, a forty-something, chain-smoking socialist from the Atari
crowd.3 Pushed by Jobs, Holt abandoned the fifty-year-old con-
ventional linear unit technology and created a switching power
supply that revolutionized the way power was delivered to elec-
tronics products. Jobs’s pursuit of quiet and Holt’s ability to de-
liver an innovative power supply that didn’t need a fan made the
Apple II the quietest and smallest personal computer ever made
(a smaller computer was possible because it didn’t need extra space
for the fan).
Had Jobs never asked, “Why does a computer need a fan?” and
“How do we keep a computer cool without a fan?” the Apple com-
puter as we know it would not exist.
Innovative Idea #2: The Macintosh User Interface,
Operating System, and Mouse
The seed for the Macintosh, with its revolutionary operating
system, was planted when Jobs visited Xerox PARC in 1979. Xerox,
the copier company, created the Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC), a research lab charged with designing the office of the
future. Jobs wrangled a visit to PARC in exchange for offering
Xerox an opportunity to invest in Apple. Xerox didn’t know how
to capitalize on the exciting things going on at PARC, but Jobs did.
Jobs carefully observed the PARC computer screen filled with
icons, pull-down menus, and overlapping windows—all controlled
3
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
by the click of a mouse.“What we saw was incomplete and flawed,”
Jobs said,“but the germ of the idea was there . . . within ten minutes
it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this.”4 He
spent the next five years at Apple leading the design team that would
produce the Macintosh computer, the first personal computer with
a graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse. Oh, and he saw some-
thing else during the PARC visit. He got his first taste of object-
oriented programming, which became the key to the OSX operating
system that Apple acquired from Jobs’s other start-up, NeXT Com-
puters. What if Jobs had never visited Xerox PARC to observe what
was going on there?
Innovative Idea #3: Desktop Publishing on the Mac
The Macintosh, with its LaserWriter printer, was the first computer
to bring desktop publishing to the masses. Jobs claims that the
“beautiful typography” available on the Macintosh would never
have been introduced if he hadn’t dropped in on a calligraphy class
at Reed College in Oregon. Says Jobs:
Reed College offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruc-
tion in the country. Throughout the campus every poster,
every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand-
calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have
to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy
class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and
san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space
between different letter combinations, about what makes
great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artisti-
cally subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I
found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any
practical application in my life. But ten years later, when
we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all
came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It
4
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had
never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac
would have never had multiple typefaces or proportion-
ally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac,
it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.5
What if Jobs hadn’t decided to drop in on the calligraphy classes
when he had dropped out of college?
So what do we learn from Jobs’s ability to think different? Well,
first we see that his innovative ideas didn’t spring fully formed
from his head, as if they were a gift from the Idea Fairy. When we
examine the origins of these ideas, we typically find that the cata-
lyst was: (1) a question that challenged the status quo, (2) an ob-
servation of a technology, company, or customer, (3) an experience
or experiment where he was trying out something new, or (4) a
conversation with someone who alerted him to an important piece
of knowledge or opportunity. In fact, by carefully examining Jobs’s
behaviors and, specifically, how those behaviors brought in new di-
verse knowledge that triggered an innovative idea, we can trace his
innovative ideas to their source.
What is the moral of this story? We want to convince you that
creativity is not just a genetic endowment and not just a cognitive
skill. Rather, we’ve learned that creative ideas spring from behav-
ioral skills that you, too, can acquire to catalyze innovative ideas in
yourself and in others.
What Makes Innovators Different?
So what makes innovators different from the rest of us? Most of us
believe this question has been answered. It’s a genetic endowment.
Some people are right brained, which allows them to be more
intuitive and divergent thinkers. Either you have it or you don’t.
But does research really support this idea? Our research confirms
5
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
others’ work that creativity skills are not simply genetic traits en-
dowed at birth, but that they can be developed. In fact, the most
comprehensive study confirming this was done by a group of re-
searchers, Merton Reznikoff, George Domino, Carolyn Bridges,
and Merton Honeymon, who studied creative abilities in 117 pairs
of identical and fraternal twins. Testing twins aged fifteen to
twenty-two, they found that only about 30 percent of the per-
formance of identical twins on a battery of ten creativity tests
could be attributed to genetics.6 In contrast, roughly 80 percent to
85 percent of the twins’ performance on general intelligence (IQ)
tests could be attributed to genetics.7 So general intelligence (at
least the way scientists measure it) is basically a genetic
endowment, but creativity is not. Nurture trumps nature as far as
creativity goes. Six other creativity studies of identical twins con-
firm the Reznikoff et al. result: roughly 25 percent to 40 percent of
what we do innovatively stems from genetics.8 That means that
roughly two-thirds of our innovation skills still come through
learning—from first understanding the skill, then practicing it,
and ultimately gaining confidence in our capacity to create.
This is one reason that individuals who grow up in societies
that promote community versus individualism and hierarchy over
merit—such as Japan, China, Korea, and many Arab nations—are
less likely to creatively challenge the status quo and turn out in-
novations (or win Nobel prizes). To be sure, many innovators in
our study seemed genetically gifted. But more importantly, they
often described how they acquired innovation skills from role
models who made it “safe” as well as exciting to discover new ways
of doing things.
If innovators can be made and not just born, how then do
they come up with great new ideas? Our research on roughly
five hundred innovators compared to roughly five thousand exec-
utives led us to identify five discovery skills that distinguish
innovators from typical executives (for detail on the research
6
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
methods, see appendix B). First and foremost, innovators count
on a cognitive skill that we call “associational thinking” or sim-
ply “associating.” Associating happens as the brain tries to syn-
thesize and make sense of novel inputs. It helps innovators
discover new directions by making connections across seem-
ingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. Innovative break-
throughs often happen at the intersection of diverse disciplines
and fields. Author Frans Johanssen described this phenomenon as
“the Medici effect,” referring to the creative explosion in Florence
when the Medici family brought together creators from a wide
range of disciplines—sculptors, scientist, poets, philosophers,
painters, and architects. As these individuals connected, they
created new ideas at the intersection of their respective fields,
thereby spawning the Renaissance, one of the most innovative eras
in history. Put simply, innovative thinkers connect fields, prob-
lems, or ideas that others find unrelated.
The other four discovery skills trigger associational thinking
by helping innovators increase their stock of building-block ideas
from which innovative ideas spring. Specifically, innovators engage
the following behavioral skills more frequently:
Questioning. Innovators are consummate questioners who
show a passion for inquiry. Their queries frequently challenge
the status quo, just as Jobs did when he asked, “Why does a
computer need a fan?” They love to ask, “If we tried this,
what would happen?” Innovators, like Jobs, ask questions
to understand how things really are today, why they are
that way, and how they might be changed or disrupted.
Collectively, their questions provoke new insights, connec-
tions, possibilities, and directions. We found that innovators
consistently demonstrate a high Q/A ratio, where questions
(Q) not only outnumber answers (A) in a typical conversa-
tion, but are valued at least as highly as good answers.
7
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
Observing. Innovators are also intense observers. They care-
fully watch the world around them—including customers,
products, services, technologies, and companies—and the
observations help them gain insights into and ideas for new
ways of doing things. Jobs’s observation trip to Xerox PARC
provided the germ of insight that was the catalyst for both
the Macintosh’s innovative operating system and mouse, and
Apple’s current OSX operating system.
Networking. Innovators spend a lot of time and energy
finding and testing ideas through a diverse network of
individuals who vary wildly in their backgrounds and per-
spectives. Rather than simply doing social networking or net-
working for resources, they actively search for new ideas by
talking to people who may offer a radically different view of
things. For example, Jobs talked with an Apple Fellow named
Alan Kay, who told him to “go visit these crazy guys up in San
Rafael, California.” The crazy guys were Ed Catmull and Alvy
Ray, who headed up a small computer graphics operation
called Industrial Light & Magic (the group created special
effects for George Lucas’s movies). Fascinated by their opera-
tion, Jobs bought Industrial Light & Magic for $10 million,
renamed it Pixar, and eventually took it public for $1 billion.
Had he never chatted with Kay, he would never have wound
up purchasing Pixar, and the world might never have thrilled
to wonderful animated films like Toy Story,WALL-E, and Up.
Experimenting. Finally, innovators are constantly trying out
new experiences and piloting new ideas. Experimenters un-
ceasingly explore the world intellectually and experientially,
holding convictions at bay and testing hypotheses along the
way. They visit new places, try new things, seek new informa-
tion, and experiment to learn new things. Jobs, for example,
has tried new experiences all his life—from meditation and
8
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
living in an ashram in India to dropping in on a calligraphy
class at Reed College. All these varied experiences would later
trigger ideas for innovations at Apple Computer.
Collectively, these discovery skills—the cognitive skill of
associating and the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, net-
working, and experimenting—constitute what we call the innovator’s
DNA, or the code for generating innovative business ideas.
The Courage to Innovate
Why do innovators question, observe, network, and experiment
more than typical executives? As we examined what motivates
them, we discovered two common themes. First, they actively
desire to change the status quo. Second, they regularly take smart
risks to make that change happen. Consider the consistency of lan-
guage that innovators use to describe their motives. Jobs wants to
“put a ding in the universe.” Google cofounder Larry Page has said
he’s out to “change the world.” These innovators steer entirely clear
of a common cognitive trap called the status quo bias—the ten-
dency to prefer an existing state of affairs to alternative ones. Most
of us simply accept the status quo. We may even like routine and
prefer not to rock the boat. We adhere to the saying, “if it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it,” while not really questioning whether “it” is
“broke.” In contrast, innovators see many things as “broke.” And
they want to fix them.
How do innovators break the status quo? One way is to refuse
to be dictated by other people’s schedules. Just glance at an
innovative executive’s typical calendar and you will find a radically
different schedule compared to less inventive executives. We found
that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50 percent
more time on discovery activities (questioning, observing, experi-
menting, and networking) than CEOs with no innovation track
9
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
record. That translated into spending almost one more day each
week on discovery activities. They understand that fulfilling their
dreams to change the world means they’ve got to spend a signifi-
cant amount of time trying to discover how to change the world.
And having the courage to innovate means that they are actively
looking for opportunities to change the world.
Embracing a mission for change makes it much easier to take
smart risks, make mistakes, and most of all, learn quickly from
them. Most innovative entrepreneurs we studied felt that mistakes
are nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, they are an expected cost of
doing business. “If the people running Amazon.com don’t make
some significant mistakes,” Jeff Bezos told us, “then we won’t be
doing a good job for our shareholders because we won’t be swing-
ing for the fences.” In short, innovators rely on their “courage to
innovate”—an active bias against the status quo and an unflinch-
ing willingness to take smart risks—to transform ideas into
powerful impact.
In summary, the DNA of innovators—or the code for
generating innovative ideas—is expressed in the model shown in
figure 1-1. The key skill for generating innovative ideas is the cog-
nitive skill of associational thinking. The reason that some people
generate more associations than others is partly because their
brains are just wired that way. But a more critical reason is that
they more frequently engage in the behavioral skills of question-
ing, observing, networking, and experimenting. These are the cat-
alysts for associational thinking. Of course, the next question is,
why do some people engage these four skills more than others?
The answer is that they have the courage to innovate. They are
willing to embrace a mission for change and take risks to make
change happen. The bottom line is that to improve your ability to
generate innovative ideas, you need to practice associational
thinking and more frequently engage in questioning, observing,
10
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Courage to innovate
Behavioral skills
Cognitive skill to synthesize novel inputs
Innovative business
idea Networking
Experimenting
Observing
Questioning
Challenging the status quo Associational
thinking
Taking risks
F IGURE 1 -1
The innovator’s DNA model for generating innovative ideas
networking, and experimenting. That will likely only happen if
you can somehow cultivate the courage to innovate.
As innovators actively engage in their discovery skills over a life-
time, they build discovery habits, and they become defined by them.
They grow increasingly confident in their ability to discover what’s
next, and they believe deeply that generating creative insights is their
job. It is not something to delegate to someone else. As A. G. Lafley
declared, “innovation is the central job of every leader—business
unit managers, functional leaders, and the CEO.”9
The Innovator’s DNA
We’ve just told you that the ability to be innovative is not based
primarily on genetics. At the same time, we’re using the DNA
metaphor to describe the inner workings of innovators, which sug-
gests that it is. Bear with us for a moment. (And welcome to the
world of innovation, where the ability to synthesize two seemingly
opposing ideas is the type of associating that produces novel
The DNA of Disruptive Innovators 11
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
insights.) Recent developments in the field of gene therapy show
that it is possible to modify and strengthen your physical DNA,
for example, to help ward off diseases.10 Likewise, it is metaphor-
ically possible to strengthen your personal innovator’s DNA. Let
us provide an illustration.
Imagine that you have an identical twin, endowed with
the same brains and natural talents that you have. You’re both
given one week to come up with a creative new business idea.
During that week, you come up with ideas alone, just thinking
in your room. By contrast, your twin (1) talks with ten people—
including an engineer, a musician, a stay-at-home dad, and a
designer—about the venture; (2) visits three innovative start-ups
to observe what they do; (3) samples five “new to the market”
products and takes them apart; (4) shows a prototype he’s built
to five people, and (5) asks “What if I tried this?” and “What
would make this not work?” at least ten times each day during
these networking, observing, and experimenting activities. Who
do you bet will come up with the more innovative (and usable)
idea? My guess is that you’d bet on your twin, and not because
he has better natural (genetic) creative abilities. Of course, the
anchor weight of genetics is still there, but it is not the dominant
predictor. People can learn to more capably come up with inno-
vative solutions to problems by acting in the way that your
twin did.
As figure 1-2 shows, innovative entrepreneurs rarely display
across-the-board strength in observing, experimenting, and net-
working, and actually don’t need to. All of the high-profile inno-
vative entrepreneurs in our study scored above the seventieth
percentile in associating and questioning. The innovators seemed
to hold these two discovery skills more universally. But the inno-
vators we studied didn’t need world-class strength in the other
behaviors. It certainly helped if they excelled at one of the four
skills and were strong in at least two. If you hope to be a better
12
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
Discovery Skill Strengths Differ for Disruptive Innovators
To understand that innovative entrepreneurs develop and use
different skills, look at figure 1-2. It shows the percentile rank
scores on each of the five discovery skills for four well-known
founders and innovators: Pierre Omidyar (eBay), Michael Dell
(Dell), Michael Lazaridis (Research In Motion), and Scott Cook
(Intuit). The percentile rank indicates the percentage of over
five thousand executives and innovators in our database who
scored lower on that particular skill. A particular skill is meas-
ured by the frequency and intensity with which these individ-
uals engage in activities that compose the skill.
As so
cia tin
g 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
P er
ce nt
ile r
an k
Qu es
tio nin
g
Ob se
rvi ng
Ex pe
rim en
tin g
Ne tw
or kin
g
Mike Lazaridis Pierre Omidyar Scott Cook Michael Dell Noninnovators
F IGURE 1 -2
High-profile innovators’ discovery skills profile
As you can see, the pattern for each innovative entrepreneur is
different. For example, Omidyar is much more likely to acquire
his ideas through questioning (ninety-fifty percentile) and
(continued)
13
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
innovator, you will need to figure out which of these skills you can
improve and which can be distinguishing skills to help you gener-
ate innovative ideas.
Delivery Skills: Why Most Senior Executives Don’t Think Different
We’ve spent the past eight years interviewing scores of senior
executives—mostly at large companies—asking them to describe
the most novel and valuable strategic insights that they had gen-
erated during their careers. Somewhat surprisingly, we found that
top executives rarely mentioned an innovative business idea that
they had personally generated. They were extremely intelligent and
talented individuals who were accomplished at delivering results,
but they didn’t have much direct, personal experience with gener-
ating innovative business ideas.
In contrast to innovators who seek to fundamentally change
existing business models, products, or processes, most senior
executives work hard to efficiently deliver the next thing that
should be done given the existing business model. That is, they
observing (eighty-seventh percentile), Dell through exper-
imenting (ninetieth percentile) and networking (ninety-eighth
percentile), Cook through observing (eighty-eighth percentile)
and questioning (eighty-third percentile), and Lazaridis through
questioning (ninety-sixth percentile) and networking (ninety-
eighth percentile). The point is that each of these innovative
entrepreneurs did not score high on all five of the discovery
skills. They each combined the discovery skills uniquely to
forge new insights. Just as each person’s physical DNA is
unique, an innovator’s DNA comprises a unique combination
of skills and behaviors.
14
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15 The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
work inside the box. They shine at converting a vision or goal into
the specific tasks to achieve the defined goal. They organize work
and conscientiously execute logical, detailed, data-driven plans of
action. In short, most executives excel at execution, including the
I’m Not Steve Jobs . . . Is This Relevant?
OK, so you’re not Steve Jobs. Or Jeff Bezos. Or any other fa-
mous business innovator. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn
from these innovators. You can get better at innovating, even if
most of your innovations are somewhat incremental in nature.
We’ve seen it happen, and we’ve seen that it can make a dif-
ference. We’ve seen a pharmaceutical executive practice a
questioning technique (see chapter 3) each day to identify key
strategic issues facing his division. After three months, his boss
told him that he’d become the most effective strategic thinker
on his team. Within six months, he was promoted to a corporate
strategic planning job. “I just improved my ability to ask ques-
tions,” he told us. We’ve seen MBA students in our classes use
the observing, networking, and experimenting techniques to
generate entrepreneurial business ideas. One got the idea for
launching a company that uses bacteria to eat pollution from
networking with someone he met at a neighborhood barbeque.
Another observed that the best English speakers in Brazil were
people who watched American movies and television. So he
launched a company that sells software that helps people learn
English by watching movies. Many innovative ideas may seem
small, such as a new process for effectively screening job re-
cruits or a better way to build customer loyalty, but they are
valuable new ideas nonetheless. And if you come up with
enough of them, they will definitely help you advance in your
career. The point is this: you don’t have to be Steve Jobs to
generate innovative ideas for your business.
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
following four delivery skills: analyzing, planning, detail-oriented
implementing, and disciplined executing. (We’ll say more about
these skills later in the chapter and in chapter 8, but for now we
need only note that they are critical for delivering results and
translating an innovative idea into reality.)
Many innovators realize that they are deficient in these critical
skills and, consequently, try to team up with others who possess
them. For example, eBay founder Omidyar quickly recognized the
need for execution skills, so he invited Jeff Skoll, a Stanford MBA,
and Meg Whitman, a Harvard MBA, to join him. “Jeff Skoll and I
had very complementary skills,” Omidyar told us. “I’d say I did
more of the creative work developing the product and solving
problems around the product, while Jeff was involved in the more
analytical and practical side of things. He was the one who would
listen to an idea of mine and then say, ‘Ok, let’s figure out how to
get this done.’” Skoll and Whitman professionalized the eBay Web
site, added fixed-price auctions, drove international expansion, de-
veloped new categories such as autos, and integrated important
capabilities such as PayPal.
Why do most senior executives excel in the delivery skills,
but are only above average in discovery skills? It is vital to un-
derstand that the skills critical to an organization’s success vary
systematically throughout the business life cycle. (See figure 1-4).
For example, in the start-up phase of an innovative venture, the
founders are obviously more discovery-driven and entrepre-
neurial. Discovery skills are crucial early in the business life cycle
because the company’s key task is to generate new business ideas
worth pursuing. Thus, discovery (exploration) skills are highly
valued at this stage and delivery (execution) skills are second-
ary. However, once innovative entrepreneurs come up with a
promising new business idea and then shape that idea into a
bona fide business opportunity, the company begins to grow and
then must pay attention to building the processes necessary to
scale the idea.
16
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
The Discovery and Delivery Skills Matrix: How Innovators Stack Up
To test the assertion that innovative executives have a different
set of skills than typical executives, we used our innovator’s DNA
assessment to measure the percentile rank of a sample of high-
profile innovative entrepreneurs (founder CEOs of companies
on BusinessWeek’s list of the top one hundred most innovative
companies) on both the five discovery skills (associating, ques-
tioning, observing, networking, experimenting) and the four de-
livery or execution skills: analyzing, planning, detail-oriented
implementing, and self-disciplined executing. We averaged
their percentile rank scores across the five discovery skills to
get an overall percentile rank, and then did the same thing
across the four delivery skills to get an overall percentile rank.
We refer to the overall percentile rank across the five discovery
skills as the “discovery quotient” or DQ. While intellectual
quotient (or IQ) tests are designed to measure general intelli-
gence and emotional quotient (or EQ) assessments measure
emotional intelligence (ability to identify, assess, and control the
emotions of ourselves and others), discovery quotient (DQ) is
designed to measure our ability to discover ideas for new ven-
tures, products, and processes.
Figure 1-3 shows that the high-profile innovative entrepre-
neurs scored in the eighty-eighth percentile on discovery skills,
but only scored in the fifty-sixth percentile on delivery skills. In
short, they were just average at execution. We then conducted
the same analysis for a sample of nonfounder CEOs (executives
who had never started a new business). We found that most
senior executives in large organizations were the mirror image
of innovative entrepreneurs: they scored around the eightieth
percentile on delivery skills, while scoring only above average on
(continued)
17
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
Lo w
ba lan
ce d
Hi gh
ba lan
ce d
100
1007550250
75
50
25
D is
co ve
ry s
ki lls
(P er
ce nt
ile s
co re
)
Delivery skills (Percentile score)
Discovery- driven
Delivery- driven
Founder CEOs at innovative companies
Business unit managers
Nonfounder CEOs at average companies
Functional Managers
F IGURE 1 -3
Discovery-delivery skills matrix
discovery skills (sixty-second percentile). In short, they are se-
lected primarily for their execution skills. This focus on execution
is even more pronounced in business unit managers and func-
tional managers, who are worse at discovery than typical CEOs.
This data shows that innovative organizations are led by indi-
viduals with a very high DQ. It also shows that even within an
average organization, discovery skills tend to distinguish those
who make it to the highest levels of the organization. So if you
want to move up, you’d better learn how to innovate.
During the growth stage, the innovative entrepreneur may
well leave the company, either because she has no interest in scal-
ing the idea (which involves boring and routine work, at least to
her) or because she does not have the skills to manage effectively
in a large organization. Innovative entrepreneurs are often
18
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
described as poor managers because they lack the ability to fol-
low through on their new business ideas and are often irra-
tionally overconfident in them. Moreover, they are more likely to
make decisions based on hunches and personal biases rather
than data-driven analysis.11 Not surprisingly, the conventional
prescription for these problems is to replace the entrepreneurs
with professional managers—individuals with proven skills at
delivering results. At this point in the business life cycle, profes-
sional managers who are better equipped to scale the business
often replace the entrepreneur founders. When such replacement
occurs, however, key discovery skills walk away from the top man-
agement team.
Start-up stage
Growth stage
Mature stage
Decline stage
Organization imperative
Organization primarily rewards
• Develop and launch new business idea
Discovery skills
• Scale the new business idea • Build processes to execute consistently and systematically
Delivery skills
Delivery skills
Delivery skills still
dominate but discovery
skills increase in importance
• Exploit resources and capabilities generated during growth stage.
• Harvest, find, or develop other new business ideas
Delivery skills
Discovery skills
Discovery skills
Organization secondarily
rewards
F IGURE 1 -4
The business and executive skill life cycles
19
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
With the founder entrepreneur out of the picture, the ensuing
growth and maturation stage of the business life cycle begins. In
these stages, managers generally make it to the top of the man-
agement pyramid through great execution. This may involve gen-
erating incremental (sustaining) innovations for existing
customers, but the focus is on execution, not building new busi-
nesses. Surprisingly few companies in this stage pay systematic at-
tention to the selection or promotion of people with strong
discovery skills. As this happens, the lack of discovery skills at the
top becomes even more glaring, but it is still not necessarily obvi-
ous. (Contrast these common practices with those of Amazon
founder Bezos, who systematically asks any new hire, including
senior executives, to “tell me about something that you have in-
vented.” Bezos wants to hire people with an inventive attitude—in
other words, people like himself.)
Eventually, for most organizations, the initial innovations that
created the business in the first place complete their life cycle.
Growth stalls as the business hits the downward inflection point
in the well-known S curve. These mature and declining organiza-
tions are typically dominated by executives with excellent delivery
skills. Meanwhile, investors demand new growth businesses, but
senior executive teams can’t seem to find them because the man-
agement ranks are dominated by folks with strong delivery skills.
With discovery skills largely absent from the top management
team, it becomes increasingly difficult to find new business op-
portunities to fuel new company growth. The company once again
starts to see the imperative for discovery skills.
In sharp contrast, when entrepreneur founders stay through
the growth stage, the company significantly outperforms its peers
in growth and profitability.12 An entrepreneurial founder is far
more likely to surround herself with executives who are good at
discovery, or who at least understand discovery. Could Apple have
built new businesses in music (iTunes and iPod) and phones
20
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
(iPhone) on top of an older computer business without the return
of Jobs? We doubt it.
The key point here is that large companies typically fail at dis-
ruptive innovation because the top management team is domi-
nated by individuals who have been selected for delivery skills, not
discovery skills. As a result, most executives at large organizations
don’t know how to think different. It isn’t something that they
learn within their company, and it certainly isn’t something they
are taught in business school. Business schools teach people how
to be deliverers, not discoverers.
For a moment, consider your company’s track record of re-
warding and promoting discovery skills. Does your company ac-
tively screen for people who have strong discovery skills? Does
your company regularly reward discovery skills through annual
performance assessments? If the answers are no, then it is likely
that a severe discovery skill deficit exists at the top ranks of man-
agement in your company.
You Can Learn to Think Different
In this chapter, we’ve tried to convince you that creativity is not a
just a genetic predisposition; it is an active endeavor. Apple’s slo-
gan “Think Different” is inspiring but incomplete. Innovators must
consistently act different to think different. We acknowledge that
genetics are at work within innovators, and that some have superior
natural ability at associational thinking. However, even if two indi-
viduals have the same genetic creative ability, one will be more suc-
cessful at creative problem solving if he or she more frequently engages
in the discovery skills we have identified. By understanding—and
engaging in—the five discovery skills, we believe that you can find
ways to more successfully develop the creative spark within your-
self and others. Read on as we describe how to master the five dis-
covery skills in order to become a more innovative thinker.
21
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
Discovery and Delivery Skills Quiz: What’s Your Profile?
To get a quick snapshot of your discovery-delivery skills profile,
take the following self-assessment survey (1 = strongly dis-
agree; 2 = somewhat disagree; 3 = neither agree nor disagree;
4 = somewhat agree; 5 = strongly agree). Remember to answer
based on your actual behaviors, not what you would like to do.
1. Frequently, my ideas or perspectives diverge radically
from others’ perspectives.
2. I am very careful to avoid making any mistakes in my work.
3. I regularly ask questions that challenge the status quo.
4. I am extremely well organized at work.
5. New ideas often come to me when I am directly observ-
ing how people interact with products and services.
6. I must have everything finished “just right” when com-
pleting a work assignment.
7. I often find solutions to problems by drawing on solu-
tions or ideas developed in other industries, fields, or
disciplines.
8. I never jump into new projects and ventures and act
quickly without carefully thinking through all of the issues.
9. I frequently experiment to create new ways of doing
things.
10. I always follow through to complete a task, no matter
what the obstacles.
11. I regularly talk with a diverse set of people (e.g., from
different business functions, organizations, industries,
geographies, etc.) to find and refine new ideas.
22
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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
12. I excel at breaking down a goal or plan into the micro
tasks required to achieve it.
13. I attend conferences (on my areas of expertise as well
as unrelated areas) to meet new people and understand
what issues are facing them.
14. I pay careful attention to details at work to ensure that
nothing is overlooked.
15. I actively seek to identify emerging trends by reading
books, articles, magazines, blogs, and so on.
16. I hold myself and others strictly accountable for getting
results.
17. I frequently ask “what if” questions that provoke explo-
ration of new possibilities and frontiers.
18. I consistently follow through on all commitments and
finish what I’ve started.
19. I regularly observe the activities of customers, suppliers,
or other organizations to get new ideas.
20. I consistently create detailed plans to get work done.
To score your survey:
Add your score on the odd-numbered items. You score
very high on discovery skills if your total score is 45 or above,
high on discovery if your score is 40–45, moderate to high on
discovery if your score is between 35 and 40, moderate to low
if you score 29–34; you score low on discovery if your score is
28 or less.
Add your score on the even-numbered items. You score
very high on delivery skills if your total score is 45 or above,
high on delivery if your score is 40–45, moderate to high on
delivery if your score is between 35 and 40, moderate to low
(continued)
23
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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION STARTS WITH YOU
if you score 29–34; you score low on delivery if your score is
28 or less.
We have drawn this short survey from a more systematic
seventy-item assessment (either a self-assessment or a 360-
degree assessment) that we have developed to assess an in-
dividual’s discovery skills and delivery skills. You can do this
assessment through our Web site at http://www.Innovators
DNA.com. Should you decide to complete an assessment, you
will receive a development guide to walk you through your re-
sults and help you design a skill development plan. Your as-
sessment will provide you with your DQ and percentile data
for each discovery and delivery skill to compare your scores
with the over five thousand executives and innovators in our
dataset.
24
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Notes
Chapter 1 1. M. T. Hansen, H. Ibarra, and U. Peyer, “The Best Performing
CEOs in the World,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2010. 2. J. Young and W. Simon, iCon: Steve Jobs, The Second Greatest Act
in the History of Business (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 37. 3. Ibid., 38. 4. Ann Brashares, Steve Jobs: Thinks Different (New York: Twenty-
first Century Books, 2001). 5. Steve Jobs, commencement address, Stanford University, 2005. 6. Marvin Reznikoff, George Domino, Carolyn Bridges, and Merton
Honeyman, “Creative Abilities in Identical and Fraternal Twins,” Behavior Genetics 3, no. 4(1973): 365–377. For example, the researchers gave them the Remote Associations Test (RAT), where they would present twins with three words and ask them to find a fourth word linking the three; they also gave them the Alternative Uses Test, where they would ask the subjects to brainstorm as many alternative uses for a common object—like a brick—and code how many total and diver- gent responses the subjects provide.
25
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This document is authorized for use only by Yijia Zhang in ENTR 2301 Ruth 2 taught by Ruth Raubitschek, Northeastern University from Jan 2019 to Jul 2019.
7. See K. McCartney and M. Harris, “Growing Up and Growing Apart: A Developmental Meta-Analysis of Twin Studies,” Psychological Bulletin 107, no. 2 (1990): 226–237.
8. Other studies that have found that nurture trumps nature as far as creativity goes include: F. Barron, Artists in the Making (New York: Seminar Press, 1972); S. G. Vandenberg, ed., Progress in Human Behavior Genetics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968); R. C. Nichols, “Twin Studies of Ability, Personality and Interest,” Homo 29 (1978), 158–173; N. G. Waller, T. J. Bouchard, D. T. Lykken, A. Tellegen, and D. Blacker, “Creativity, Heritability, and Familiality: Which Word Does Not Belong?” Psychological Inquiry 4 (1993): 235–237; N. G. Waller, T. J. Bouchard Jr., D. T. Lykken, A. Tellegen, and D. Blacker, “Why Creativity Does Not Run in Families: A Study of Twins Reared Apart,” unpublished manuscript, 1992. For a summary of research in this area, see R. K. Sawyer, Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
9. A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan, The Game Changer (New York: Crown Business, 2008).
10. Indeed, the goal of “gene therapy” is to insert new genes into an in- dividual’s cells to replace a genetic defect with a properly functioning gene.
11. L. W. Busenitz and J. B. Barney, “Differences between Entre- preneurs and Managers in Large Organizations: Biases and Heuristics in Strategic Decision-Making,” Journal of Business Venturing 12 (1997): 9–30.
12. R. C. Anderson and D. M. Reeb, “Founding Family Ownership and Firm Performance: Evidence from the S&P 500,” The Journal of Finance, 58, no. 3 (June 2003): 1301–1327. This study found that compa- nies led by the CEO founder were 29 percent more profitable (net income to assets) and had 21 percent higher market valuations. These results cannot be attributed to the fact that founder-led companies are smaller and more likely to grow (they controlled for size and age) or are in more attractive industries (they controlled for industry). The authors conclude that “founders bring unique, value-adding skills to the firm that result in superior accounting performance and market valuations” (p. 1317).
26 NOTES
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