Dennis Kennedy points to a new resource by William C Miller and Alain Rostain, called Innovation Styles:
The Innovation Tools blog has a post called "New tool for innovation team design: Innovation Styles Online" that discusses and points to a great website, InnovationStyles, with some tests and other tools, that will help you determine your innovation style and learn more about innovation styles, how to recognize them and the role of styles in teams.
The InnovationStyles test is available through the end of October 2006, thanks to the folks at Innovation Tools. I am of the exploring style, same as Dennis. Given the descriptions below and in the test results, I am not surprised. It looks like other tools / tests will be available in the future. Clearly, they are aiming for the corporate market with their offering.
Miller & Rostain's work has shown that there are four main thinking styles associated with innovation and change:
- Visioning: to visualize the ideal future
- Modifying: to build on and optimize what has come before
- Exploring: to discover new perspectives, assumptions, and territory
- Experimenting: to combine and test many novel combinations
The explanations of each style they provide are both informative and entertaining. As with the various personality style tests (MTBI, Kiersey, and many others), the purpose of these styles is to help people understand how they approach innovation (not how innovative they are). And if taken in a group setting can help members of the group see how they approach things differently. The thinking here is that the better we know ourselves and those around us, the better we can work together - in this case for the purposes of innovative thinking.
If you are looking for a different direction on Innovation, Malcolm Ryder has a discussion today on the ways one can talk about The three flavors of Innovation. (Several people seem to be writing about innovation lately. Several articles popped up in the last day.)