Organisations powered by digitization will have to make innovation a key skill set or part of their operating culture in the 21st century. All this will be possible depending upon how they motivate their heart counts and help them inculcate innovation habits that propel an innovator in them.

Habit is a very interesting word, if you remove ‘H’ a bit of it remains, when you remove ‘ab’ still it remains. So, habits don’t die, they are immortal. BMGI has extensively researched on several successful innovations & their creators and have come up with 7 habits that every successful innovator exhibited in their quest to innovate.

Habit 1: Develop Deep Empathy for Customers
Empathy is when you become one with the customer and live his life to understand his frustrations, anxiety, pains and moments of joy. Innovators to innovate to help customer overcome frustrations and/or magnify moments of joy. 

Habit 2: Transform the way the jobs get done 
Customers buy products and services because there is a job that arise in their life that they need to do. If the new innovative solutions address the current job better than the existing ones then customers just adopt such new solutions. Focus on customer’s jobs to be done to decide on your next bet.

Habit 3: Think beyond product innovations
Innovation is not about products alone; many successful organizations have won the ‘red ocean’ business battle by innovating on the elements of business model that help compete better within same industry domain.

Habit 4: Imagine the impossible 
‘I’ m possible is what the word impossible is trying to tell us. The tragedy of most innovation attempts is not failure, but low aim. Defining ideal (what you want), while fully knowing ground reality (what you have) will help you set the direction and travel the distance.

Habit 5: Be a contrarian 
A contrarian is a person who takes up a contrary position, especially a position that is opposed to that of the majority. Questioning & challenging the current paradigms is the quality a contrarian possesses. Do you have at least few of them
Habit 6: Look beyond industry for ideas
Someone somewhere has solved a problem like mine or even worse than mine forms the premise to look outside of one’s industry for ideas. An idea import from other industry domain often results in a breakthrough (leap) Innovation.

Habit 7: Move past the idea killers 
Killing an idea is similar to an ‘abortion’. We need to weed out ‘idea killing’ mind-set. Idea is like an oxygen to an innovator’s mind, so why stop the supply and make it dead?

Making these habits omnipresent in the organisation will help your heart counts innovate and challenge existing assumptions and create substantial value. Which of these habits can your organisation be considered an expert of?

We will be exploring each of these habits in details in subsequent articles.