Why Innovation Matters Even More Today - Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation - page 27

2. Identify how this passion can be developed into useful skills, talents, or ser-
vices that you can demonstrate.
3. Determine at least three environments where your personal innovation will
be valued; in other words define the target audience and how they will ben-
efit by your presence and the demonstration of your personal innovation
through the application of your ideas, talents, and abilities.
4. Establish a plan to demonstrate this new skill, passion, or talent in an envi-
ronment where it is valued and you are recognized. For example, will it
be beneficial for you to take a new leadership role in your job, join a pro-
fessional organization, or establish a collaboration with an international
partner?
5. Determine the resources you will need to do the following:
a. Develop your passion into a personal innovation that is represented in a
new “you” whether in skills, career focus, or image (i.e., new personal
technical abilities, interpersonal skills, image changes, etc.)
b. Communicate your personal innovation outcomes to the community
where it is valued
c. Access the community or environment where your personal innovation
is valued
d. Sustain your personal innovation
6. Create a realistic (but aggressive) timeline to initiate the process.
In order to be successful in personal innovation, you need to know your
strengths. If you are a perfectionist, as many of us are, and you tend to focus
on your faults, you will waste time constantly trying to improve them. In her
topic, Know Your Strengths Inventory: A Life Coaching Tool [12] , Phyllis E.
Reardon teaches us that the better we know our strengths, the better decisions
we make, and better decisions lead to more successful outcomes in life and
work. Know your strengths, be confident in what you know, and don't get
hung up on the imperfections. In order to develop our strengths into a fruit-
ful product, we have to understand the landscape where the opportunities are:
what matters and to whom . Take your personal strengths into an environment
where they are valued.
According to David Nordfors, co-founder and executive director of the
VINNOVA-Stanford Research Center of Innovation Journalism at Stanford
University, “Innovation is today the most important driver of economic growth.
It relies upon a social climate supporting entrepreneurship within a culture of
economic and intellectual freedom [13] .” That social climate is here, and these
opportunities are yours for the taking!
Who Are the Innovators?
Innovators are individuals with knowledge in specific areas. They are equipped
with problem-solving skills, and background and expertise in their line of work,
and they know not only how to turn ideas into products but how to motivate