Innovative Thinking as a Personality Trait

The real entrepreneurs are not just "doers", they are the creative thinkers, brainstormers, innovators and relentlessly curious folk who have a vision of a better world, a better experience and have a realistic view of the acceleration of the future. 

Growing up in an alternative community primed me to be super interested in innovation and the spirit behind it. As an amateur futurist, I'm always studying trends reading psychological papers on self-actualization and articles on transhumanism, entrepreneurship and disruptive thinking.  

I watched a Ted Talk last night that linked moderate procrastination with creative thinking, the so called ideology of "originals".  Adam Grant is a pretty terrific orator. But who are these original thinkers? What are their traits?

Top 16 Traits of Innovative Thinkers

-1- Intrinsic Motivation

They have intrinsic motivation to think about ideas, the future and are insatiably curious and always thinking about their next invention, story, trend, idea, vision, project. They do not seek the reward, brainstoring is native to these people. 

They are not as a rule, success-driven, but driven by internal motives of their own. Contributing to humanity, driving change in the world, and other meta values are a common theme. 

-2- Moderate Procrastination 

They don't jump the gun, they ruminate, sleep on it, delay, ponder, mull over the inspiration. 

-3- They Produce; Prolifically 

If good ideas are rare, these people know intuitively that it is a number's game. They will take the time to brainstorm 1000 ideas to a pain point or a trend, just to come up with that 1 good idea. Their minds generate spontaneously, with an intensity. You can tell them apart by how much they produce in terms of ideation and will tend to be prolific. (See composers of classical music who produced a lot and ratio of all-time best pieces).

-4- Sacrifice 

They often neglect other parts of their life, and mold their lifestyle according to their passion. It's not to say they are necessarily "workaholic", they may consider what they do not even as "work" per se. It's simply what they love to do, what they feel they were born to do. It's in their blood and permeates their ideation, motivation and even their leisure activities. 

-5- Compensation 

They indulge in innovation, creativity and brainstorming often as a compensation for something in their lives that happend; a condition, a handicap, a traumatic event often in their formative years that predisposes them to a special intensity that could nearly be considered borderline autistic. 

-6- They Conjure the Imagination 

Whether their training is as a scientist, an academic, a journalist or an actual inventor; they conjure possibilities, intangibles, are the epitome of the human imagination and all of its potential. They can be sometimes obsessed with the future or with history and with innate problems like what is the meaning of life. 

-7- They are Highly Observant

Their skills for reading, research, digital layers and even their ability to read people, situations and office politics may be well above average. The world is an original thinker's oyster and they recognize that there is too much beauty in the world for us to recognize and too much truth in reality to know anything. The innovative thinker sometimes has a peculiar power of observation, even if they do not appear to be so. 

-8- Highly Associative 

They see connections between things most people do not, they make connections more frequently that others might consider intuitive or instinctive. Their wealth of ideas makes them more playful, less serious sometimes and even more on the edge between faction and fiction. Their brain self-rewards when they get close to an "innovative space" or zone of peak-cognitive experiences, like a meditation of creativity. 

-9- They are Insatiably Curious 

Their perseverance in the pursuit of knowledge, self-improvement and learning more is peerless. These people often are highly project driven and can master a subject, topic or project in hyper-speed, as if they bury themselves in their own quantum bubble and do in less time what others might take longer to accomplish. You can spot these people by their hunger of curiosity, a state often found in people between the ages of 18-21, that is more permanent a neuroplasticity in these people. 

-10- Need for Original Expression

These people will bust rules, break conventions, get fired, all for the sake of being true to themselves. They may rub people the wrong way, have a poor relationship with authority and be mavericks at heart. They don't mean to, it's usually just that they are sincere to their own values, which are often different from traditional hierarchies. They may be highly idealistic, altruistic, self-actualizers with a taste for creating their own reality. You can spot these people due to their peculiar self-defiant intensity and craving for original means of self-expression. 

-11- They Learn from People 

These people have an innate ability to do group-think, are sometimes great listeners who try to learn something from everyone they meet. They are typically not great fans of their own voices, but truly know how to listen and recognize that each person brings another frame of reference to a problem, situation or goal that is potentially very valuable. Some mavericks make the best facilitators you may have noticed and a 1:1 with them can change your life. When you talk with them you feel space to retell your own self-narrative in a fresh invigorating way.

You can recognize these people through their combination of IQ and emotional intelligence and their genuine caring for the empowerment of others. While they can be obsessive, many originals have values that necessitates that they are highly collaborative, excel at finding the original contribution of others to joint issues. 

-12- Turbulent Ambition 

According to a Norwegian study back in 2013, these people often have a peculiar mix of ambition, need for status and emotional instability. What you might call, the artistic personality. They dream big, but can be experts in failure due to their sometimes less than stellar emotional intelligence. Their own excessive self-doubt, fear, and peculiar relationship with failure may lead to them being more determined, creative and find variables to make their dreams a reality. 

They key hear is they can transform the experience of failure into opportunity, they are alchemists of the eccentric misfits of their own ideas with a dogged reality that simply won't budge. The come to recognize the sweet spots where their contributions can "fit" with environments, the right people, mentors, fraternity, timing, etc...

-13- Cognitive Enthusiasm 

According to renowned psychologist Csikszentmihalyi, creative people can work long hours while projecting a peculiar focused enthusiasm, concentration and naivete to the obstacles that stand in the way of the manifestation of their ideas.

We might call this, cognitive gestation, which truly is a visionary quality of work. In that, they combine playfulness with resolution, flexibility with the relentless pursuit of their goals we've come to associate with entrepreneurs. 

 -14- Transpersonalization 

They have an innate knack for flights of fancy and periods of being hyper pragmatic. They can day-dream, dream, be inspired and enter highly subjective states and come back down and criticize, deconstruct, methodically construct and deconstruct their own castles in the sand and the ideas and projects of others. 

They see the trees and the forest of the trees simultaneously better than most. Their are therefore both holistic thinkers with some specialized skills and cognitive areas of focus. You can recognize these people by their ability highly developed ability to dreamers, criticize and find faults in plans, ideas, timelines and workflows. 

-15- They are Experiential 

These people know that failure is not something to be shunned and as such actively seek out situations, people, contexts and life-events where they can experience and fail if need be to learn. Since they realize experience is the best teacher, they don't just assimilate information, the seek out wisdom from others, their environments and experience a diversity of things to be better people. 

Ultimately, they are sensitive to experience and failure to inspire them to think more indicatively. 

-16- They are Open to Risk

Creative thinkers see the value in calculated risks, they may even thrive on it. Many of their ideas will fail, with failure tolerance comes the honed ability to take better risks and brainstorm more and vet ideas with experts in such a way that the risk-reward equation is minimized and probability of success is optimized. Therefore, the greatest visionaries become expert pragmatists. The ultra pragmatist knows the value of risk, because they have experienced it. 

Risking taking itself is a form of paradoxical thinking, that can make many of us a little uncomfortable. An innovative thinker somewhere down the line may experience what works, and learn to duplicate it. An idea after all, is just a state of energy, and it realization in the world is initiatives by starting something new, taking a risk. 

In this series, professionals share how they measure success and hacks to get the job done. Read more here, then write your own #MyMetric post). My own personal metric is on being associated with projects and people who are contributing innovative work to the world. If you see yourself in this above list, I want to hear from you. 

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.