Dr. Engr. Md. Sakawat Ali

E-mail: sakawat_ali@yahoo.com

Innovation skills refer to the talent of exploiting new ideas for the purpose of gaining social or economic value. Innovation skills are usually a combination of one's ability to think creatively, problem-solving ability, as well as functional and/or technical abilities. In sum, employees at all levels need to develop their innovation skills. These include competencies like creativity, critical thinking, communication, strategic thinking, and problem solving to find and develop creative solutions for the complex world we live in. Innovation skills are practically the types of skills that allow individuals to become innovative in what they do. These are usually a combination of cognitive skills. Innovation skills are practically the types of skills that allow individuals to become innovative in what they do. These are usually a combination of cognitive skills.

The following skills are commonly associated with innovation. Due to the elusive nature of innovation, this list can never be complete.

1. Idea Formation
2. Applying Innovation Techniques
3. Decision Making
4. Design
5. Problem Solving
6. Counterfactual Thinking (The ability to forget about known facts to think of novel concepts)
7. Divergent Thinking (The ability to entertain many conflicting ideas in parallel)
8. Creative Thinking (General creative ability)
9. Intelligence (Tradition intelligence that can be measured by an IQ test)
10. Fluid Intelligence (The ability to solve novel problems i.e. when your existing knowledge doesn't apply to the problem)
11. Emotional Intelligence (The ability to perceive, analyze, understand, use and manage emotions)
12.  Conceptual Blending (The ability to blend concepts. For example, artistic concepts with engineering concepts)
13. Unbiased Thinking (The ability to overcome logical biases)
14. Intuition (An innate sense of things)
15. Trend Awareness (Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. For example, great art often emerges from artistic movements in which artists feed-off each others' ideas)
16. Sapience (Applying Innovation Techniques)
17. Research (Innovation often involves researching off-topic knowledge in search of inspiration)
18. Incubation Techniques (It's well known that inspiration often comes suddenly after a long walk or nap)
19. Modeling Concepts (Decomposing complex ideas into simple models)
20. Framing Problems (If I had an hour to save the world I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions – Einstein. How you frame a problem is often key to the solution)
21. Thought Experiment (Developing storylines that test your ideas)
22. Exploring Possibilities (Generating lists of possibilities (e.g. brainstorming)
23. Prototyping (Building working models of ideas)
24. Aleatory Techniques (Incorporating an element of chance to generate new ideas (e.g. rolling dice)
25. Improvisation (Reacting to the moment)
26. Inducing Change of Perspective (Experiments designed to change the perspective of a team of innovators (e.g. going to a bar)
27. Multiple Idea Facilitation (Games and processes that generate ideas)
28. Mental State Shift (Activities designed to change your mental state (e.g. sleeping, socializing)
29. Hypothesis Testing (Testing the validity of new ideas)
30. Morphological Analysis (Generating a list of all possible solutions to a problem (no matter how remote)
31. Gut Decisions (The application of intuition to decisions)
32. Decision Analysis (Analysis of a decision (e.g. decomposing it or rating it)
33. Analogies (Using one subject to model another subject (e.g. modeling space flight after bumble bee flight)
34. Remote Associations (Associating seemingly unrelated things)
35. Remote Consequences (Thinking of remote consequences (e.g. butterfly effect)
36. Sense making (Making sense of chaos)
37. Artistic Ability (Ability in the arts (e.g. music)
38. Design Sense (An innate sense of design)
39. Aesthetic Sense (A sense of what makes art, design and culture attractive to the mind)
40. Functional Sense (A sense of what makes something useful)
41. Design Analysis (The ability to critique a design)
42. User-centered Design (Design focused on users)
43. Use-centered Design (Design focused on the usefulness of something)
44. Critical Design (A critical theory approach to design)
45. Speculative Design (Most design starts with a problem and designs a solution. Speculative Design starts with a design and then determines if it solves any problems)
46. Lateral Thinking (Reasoning that is not immediately obvious. Lateral thinking often involves jumps of logic)
47. Developing Useful Metaphors (Developing symbolic representations of a problem)
48. Problem Visualization (Drawing pictures and diagrams of a problem.
49. Reduction (Reducing a complex problem into a simpler representation)
50. Courage
51. Curiosity
52. Imagination
53. Sociability
54. Playfulness
55. Introspection
56. Resilience & Endurance
57. Originality
58. Openness
59. Tolerance for Ambiguity
60. Optimism

 Innovation Skills for the Future:

1. Communication skills
2. Strategic thinking
3. Leadership skills
4. Creative problem-solving
5. Analytical thinking
6. Work collaboratively
7.  Motivation/drive
8. Adaptability
9. Quantitative skills
10. Decision making
11. Risk-taking
12. Industry related work experience
13. Global mindset
14. Entrepreneurship

The collection of skills could be grouped together and described as “innovation skills” since all are vital to developing and launching an innovation. It takes creative problem solving, leadership, strategic thinking, and effective communication.

Key Words: Innovation Skills