How do I find innovative people for my organization? And how can I become more innovative myself? These are questions that stump senior executives, who understand 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. In searching for answers, we undertook a six-year study to uncove…
This study traces the origins of innovative strategies by examining the attributes of innovative entrepreneurs. In an inductive grounded theory study of innovative entrepreneurs, we develop a theory that innovative entrepreneurs differ from executives on four behavioral patterns through which they acquire information: (1) questioning; (2) observing; (3) experimenting; and (4) idea networking. W…