As the Better Business Bureau Innovation Academy 2021 cohort nears the halfway point of their year-long journey, they are now starting to discover where they fall in the innovation continuum and the skills required for each stage of innovation. According to Ron Price, this is when the Innovation Academy clicks for most people—they can now put it into the perspective of their daily work and their individual skills, talents, and passions.
“We learn much faster when we can put what we learn into context, when we can make it relevant to the kind of work we’re doing right now. There’s a big difference between learning something in a classroom and being able to actually live it out in your day-to-day work. And I love the homework that Dr. Evans Baiya gives us, that we get to work as teams because we get to share the burden of it. But the real purpose is to make sure we’re practicing what we’re learning, so that it’s becoming something that we can apply in practical ways day-to-day,” Ron told the group.
This session did just that, exploring problem identification in the first stage and how each member of the cohort measured in the skills, behaviors, and motivators needed to excel.
The Identify Stage is all about ideas, problems, and opportunities—the more the better. Before the cohort gets too far down the innovation pathway, they must be masters of idea management and problem identification. Those who excel in this stage are often creative learners and futuristic thinkers. They are resilient and flexible, passionate about finding new ways to do things, and enjoy frequent change. As leaders, they are persuasive. Yet, the Academy faculty highlighted the importance of recognizing that not everyone is going to approach this stage in the same way.
“In order to be really great at innovation, you can’t just measure people by their expertise,” Ron said. “You can’t just measure them by whether they have a degree in biochemistry, or whether they have a degree in accounting or marketing. There’s more to the person than just their education; there’s more to a person than just their background.”
Ron took the cohort on a detailed journey through their TTI TriMetrix HD Assessment results—the very same report that Innovator’s Advantage uses to calculate Innovation Fitness™. Still working virtually and across time zones, the cohort utilized the Zoom chat to share their individual scores for categories like job competency skills, motivators, and behaviors. As expected, the group had a wide range of scores relating to the skills essential for an Identifier—futuristic thinking, teamwork, and innovation. They also had differing scores for the top behaviors of an Identifier—competitive, interactive, and urgent.
But as the facilitators emphasized, each of these skills could be grown by defining, practicing, and mastering them—if the members of the group wanted to.
“I’ll be the very first person to tell you that your first responsibility is to make sure that you enjoy what you do,” Dr. Evans Baiya said. “And if you do not enjoy what you do, it means your personality is mismatched with your job or the activities that you conduct every day. It’s not just about the job—it’s about your fulfillment in the job. So you may want to look at this list of things you say you want to work on. Don’t just choose them because you think you should. No, that’s not the reason you work! You work not only so you can be the best version of yourself, but so you can actually be the best version of yourself in your job.”
Soon, the cohort will take the next step of applying their new knowledge to their daily work with team projects and a week of in-person innovation activities. Before that, though, they will continue to move through the Six Stages of Innovation, see how their skills match up to each stage, and which skills they can grow for their own Innovator’s Advantage.
To read more about the BBB Greater West + Pacific Innovation Academy 2021, click here. And if you want to learn more about how your organization could benefit from hosting an Academy, click here.
