Identifying the university’s innovators

There are two kinds of people that make innovation initiatives successful - those who focus on building the internal platform required to develop organizational innovation capabilities; and those who turn ideas and research into new programs, products and services. The former are more strategic and tactical, the latter more operational and rare.

I try to build alliances with my colleagues in the former group in order to support the later group. How do I identify this latter group? Here are some things I look for:

• People who can make things happen rather than people who have lots of ideas.
  

• People who have created results as an individual.
  

• People who make decisions even when they feel they do not have enough information.

• People who like provocative questions versus becoming defensive and combative.
  

• People who keep a user group in mind when doing their research, and actually interact with them.
  

• Those who are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns that point to opportunity.

A great way to find potential innovators is to look at who is applying for internal development grants, from our campus as well as the university system. They have a vision and are prepared to do the hard work required to make it a reality.