Speed test your discovery skills against the Inventors DNA theory:

Do you often question the conventional wisdom in situations? Do you often ask the questions: ‘Why?’‘Why not?’‘What if . . . ?’ Do you often fnd yourself asking: ‘I wonder how, what, when . . . ?’ Do you often ask if there is a better way of doing things? Do you usually accept ‘the rules of the game’? Do you pose a question (or hold your tongue) when you don’t agree? Do you generally pose a question when you don’t understand the reasons behind a course of action? Do you generally pose a question when you don’t understand a declaration or statement? Do you actively turn your senses on when encountering people, situations, activities (active observation mode)? Do you actively try to assign meaning to what you see when you are ‘outside the building’ (or do you typically just stroll around)? Do you typically try to put the pieces together to reach the ‘Aha!’

moment?

Do you often expose yourself to diferent ideas, people, situations?

Do you spend time testing ideas with other people, not only those who are like-minded?

Do you have a net of people to call if you need advice on diferent issues?

Do people call you for advice?

Are you a member of a club, association, cooperative, board?

Do you actively try out new solutions in diferent settings (e.g. in the kitchen, when studying, in a club, at work)?

Are you an early adopter (or a laggard) in taking up new things?

Are you an early rejector of leading trends or fashion fads?

Do you often test new music, books, techniques?

Do you fnd pleasure in fnding relationships, patterns and connections between situations, events, episodes, etc.? In short, do you connect the dots (or see them as separate)?

Do you sometimes come up with unorthodox or surprising ideas?

Do you sometimes get ideas by connecting insights from seemingly unrelated areas of your knowledge?

Do you sometimes play mental games, trying to see an issue from a diferent perspective?

Do you sometimes daydream and let your thoughts fy without judging?

If you answered ‘yes’ on the vast majority of these questions, you could potentially have the skills needed to be a person full of ideas and with capacity to act innovatively and creatively. If most of your answers were ‘no’, then perhaps try to improve your questioning, observing, networking, experimenting and associating skills!