Invention Intelligence Lab

Two happenings make it a good time to be focusing on what turns natural innovators into driven entrepreneurs:

1. Our very own Deb Leary was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list last weekend, for services to Entrepreneurship and her local community.
2. NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) hosted the launch and a panel discussion around Dr Elizabeth Chell’s revised edition of the Entrepreneurial Personality (Psychology Press, May 08).

In Deb’s case, she had just qualified as a lecturer in English studies when the idea for a new kind of forensic stepping plate struck her and then grew into a full entrepreneurial seizure.

I think it’s safe to say she hasn’t had time or inclination to look back since. Both Deb and her company, Forensic Pathways, have won many awards for innovation and entrepreneurship in the last 4 years, and she devotes a large proportion of her time to sharing her experiences and helping others follow suit.

For anyone who knows Deb or has heard her speak, it’s easy to see the top 5 entrepreneurial characteristics that Dr Chell has picked out from the 20 she has identified in her work over the last 20 years.

1. Natural creativity
2. An inbuilt self-confidence
3. Enormous drive and energy
4. Ability to identify and manage risk
5. A sense of leadership

The list is no big surprise.

What IS interesting the sea-change happening in current thinking.

Even a couple of years ago there was a common belief that entrepreneurs were born and not made. Now, it’s fascinating to listen to NESTA’s panellists talking about projects that are actually happening to help develop creative innovators into entrepreneurs, social or “selfish”.

The key of course, is to let the natural innovators discover for themselves, by copying from role models, by making mistakes and trying again, by having someone bring out the characteristics in themselves.

The cornerstones to what we’re building here at Invention Intelligence, in fact.

As an independent body backing research into and advancement of innovative behaviour in the UK, NESTA is very interested in current thinking and practices. Look at their new projects and you’ll see there’s a combination of the experimental and the down-to-earth pragmatic about NESTA’s varied work that puts it in synch with the pace of change the Internet and digital revolution are forcing on business and innovation globally.

I’ll certainly rate anything or anyone that’s pushing the envelope on ways to catalyze natural ideas people into entrepreneurial leaders. Obviously Queenie does too.

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