If good managers hire people who are smarter than they are, does that make the CEO the dumbest person in the company?
While that question -- posed in a "Dilbert" cartoon -- might seem flip and irreverent, Brigham Young University professor Jeff Dyer uses it as an example of one of the four behaviors that form the secret sauce of being an innovator.
"The innovation challenge is about asking questions that challenge the status quo, because you're trying to change what is in the world," Dyer said during his keynote at the 2012 Front End of Innovation conference in Orlando, Fla.
 |
| Jeff Dyer: "We were really interested in understanding how does someone like Steve Jobs 'think different.'" |
Being innovative can be taught, Dyer asserted. He pointed to research suggesting that while general intelligence is mostly based on genetics, creativity is more the product of nurture than nature.
"There are a variety of things that shape your ability to be a creative thinker, and one of the really important things is whether or not you are encouraged to question," Dyer said.
