Mathis, P. D., & Fila, N. D., & Purzer, S. (2014, June), Deconstructing the Innovator's DNA  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20245

\bibitem{asee_peer_20245}
  Mathis, P. D., \& Fila, N. D., \& Purzer, S. (2014, June), \emph{Deconstructing the Innovator's DNA}
  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana.
  10.18260/1-2--20245

Paul D. Mathis, Nicholas D. Fila, and Senay Purzer.  "Deconstructing the Innovator's DNA".  2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2014.  https://peer.asee.org/20245 Internet.  28 Apr, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_20245}
  Paul D. Mathis, Nicholas D. Fila, and Senay Purzer.
  "Deconstructing the Innovator's DNA".
  \emph{2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2014.
  https://peer.asee.org/20245 Internet.  28 Apr, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_20245
author = "Paul D. Mathis, Nicholas D. Fila, and Senay Purzer"
title = "Deconstructing the Innovator's DNA"
booktitle = "2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2014"
month = "June"
address = "Indianapolis, Indiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/20245}
number = {10.18260/1-2--20245}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -                                    Decoding Innovators DNAInnovation helps transform companies and markets at a global and national scale. Recentresearch has identified individual skills that experts describe as essential to their successfulinnovations. These five skills, embodied in The Innovators DNA include associating,experimenting, networking, observing, and questioning. While, the Innovators DNA describeshow these skills are used and contribute to innovative ideas, it does not explain which of theseskills are more important or how these behaviors are linked. The purpose of this study is todevelop a better understanding of the five innovative skills through a content analysis of expertinnovators. More specifically we answered the following questions: a) which of the five skillsdo innovators most frequently use first in their innovation process? ; b) with which of the fiveskills do innovators most often conclude the innovation process? c) which sequence of skills doinnovators most frequently use? ; d) which skills are central to innovation?In order to address the above research questions, we collected case studies of individualinnovators from three bestseller innovation books: The Innovators DNA, The Ten Faces ofInnovation, and The Medici Effect. Our sample comprised over 50 examples of successfulinnovations by recognized experts. We conducted a content analysis using a protocol thatincludes five skills identified in The Innovators DNA: observation, questioning, experimenting,networking, and association.Our analysis indicates that a majority of successful innovators have a distinct pattern of behaviorfor discovery. Expert innovators began their process with observation and concluded withexperimenting. The most frequent sequence of skills used was observation to questioning toexperimenting. The skills most central to innovation were observation and questioning. Based onthese results and those of related studies, we make recommendations for further research relatedto educating innovative engineers and identifying pathways to innovation.
AU  - Paul D. Mathis
AU  - Nicholas D. Fila
AU  - Senay Purzer
CY  - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA  - 2014/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Deconstructing the Innovator's DNA
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/20245
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--20245
ER  -