Abstract
The given term paper is devoted to the topic of personal innovative capabilities and the variety of ways to enhance them. The timeliness of the research is strictly connected with the fact that the requirements that successful specialists are expected to meet have changed recently. The purpose of the research is to study the nature of innovativeness on a personal level and use this knowledge to define the methods helping to enhance personal innovative capabilities.
According to the conclusions, the studied concept has a structure involving numerous components, and enhancing the particular skills with the help of exercises and special literature can contribute to the development of one’s innovativeness. The examples of concepts identified within the frame of research include critical thinking, lateral thinking, communication skills, observation skills, and self-reflection.
Introduction
Assessing modern human society, one can notice that optimization, innovation, and constant improvement can be regarded as the most common values of the twenty-first century. Living in the present conditions, people are expected to possess certain qualities that may seem to be incompatible with each other: the modern professional in any field needs to have advanced computing skills and be able to process a large amount of data during the short period.
At the same time, the requirements that are imposed on a successful professional of the twenty-first century are not limited by the ability to grasp in a single flash – reviewing the most common hiring specifications for well-paid jobs in different countries, it is easy to point out that an effective specialist in almost any field needs to present an improved version of a personal computer. Demonstrating the ability to understand, process, and memorize a lot of relevant information, he or she still needs to fulfill the tasks that are beyond the scope of any digital device – be creative, invent something new, and display the well-developed intuition helping him or her to use previous experience effectively and make right decisions even if there are significant information gaps. Innovative capacity which presents the aggregate of the discussed competencies plays an important role in the life of any professional whose work is connected to inventions.
Despite that, it may also be necessary for people working in any field to develop their innovative capabilities; in fact, innovative capacity of a person often defines the range of decisions and methods that he or she may utilize to improve his or her position in the society and change the world for the better.
On the premise that personal innovative capacities play a critical role in the career development of any professional, the given paper reviews and summarize the information on the most effective ways to enhance personal innovativeness and, therefore, fulfill one’s potential.
Method of Analysis
An important feature that is related to the topic of personal innovativeness is that the subject is difficult to be studied with the help of the traditional scientific method. Many authors tend to use creativity and personal innovativeness as synonyms, and creativity cannot be measured as the results would be rather subjective. Therefore, the opportunities to define the methods to develop one’s innovativeness by an experimental approach are limited. Another important detail that is peculiar to the study is that personal innovativeness has a complicated structure that involves numerous skills, and the particular skills are to be developed with the help of dissimilar methods.
Considering the substantial number of qualitative and quantitative studies devoted to the topic, it was decided to review the information from different sources, define the skills associated with personal innovativeness that are mentioned the most frequently, and analyze each skill separately to find the methods helping to develop it. Therefore, the paper is aimed at defining the methods to enhance personal innovativeness and analyzing its complicated structure.
What is Personal Innovative Capability?
Innovative capacity is the term that is often used in different contexts, and its meaning tends to vary depending on the situation. Speaking about the basic meaning of innovative capacity, it is possible to define it as the ability to absorb a lot of information, to create new things based on previous knowledge, and improve everything which has been done. It is extremely important to understand that such a definition can be regarded as rather general, and, to understand the meaning of innovative capabilities more thoroughly, it is necessary to consider that innovative capacity exists on different levels.
To begin with, innovative capacity can be regarded as the ability which a group of any size possesses or lacks. Innovativeness is analyzed as a quality or ability of the entire humanity, the particular nation or race, the group of people in a city, the age group, and the group of colleagues. At the same time, the innovativeness of a group exists because at least a few of its members have developed innovation capacities.
Continuing on the topic of innovative capacity, it is important to note that the development of personal innovativeness can be seen as a more complicated task than its development in the group of people. Any group can be characterized as a unique living organism that combines strong suits of different people. Working with the entire group, it is easier to achieve necessary results because there is a range of people possessing their strengths and weaknesses, and they can help one another when there is a need for changes and improvements.
The situation seems to be different in case if we touch upon the development of personal innovative capabilities – trying to fulfill this task, any person is limited by the range of his or her unique talents and defects in the character. Innovation capacity is a complex notion as it involves numerous skills and domains of competence. Therefore, before developing personal innovative capabilities, an individual needs to conduct an objective analysis of his or her features to define which ones need more attention and develop the most effective strategy.
Innovativeness on different organizational levels can be regarded as one of the topics of interest for many researchers in the field of management; indeed, despite the seeming simplicity of the notion, innovativeness has a complicated structure and to understand the nature of personal innovativeness, it is necessary to review the entire system. Thus, according to Saripalle et al., the personal innovativeness of an individual presents his or her ability to make a significant contribution to the development and progress of an organization (1). More than that, the researchers suppose that personal innovativeness does not belong to the number of abstract notions that can be used to describe a person; instead, they claim that it can be measured with the help of the special method they have designed.
The researchers introduce the notion of “individual innovation index” and provide readers with an opportunity to get acquainted with the special matrix which classifies people based on their innovation index. To understand the most recent ideas related to the nature of personal innovativeness, it is necessary to note that the authors see this quality as one which allows to single out at least five groups of people: “seekers, challengers, loungers, performers, and pioneers” who possess the dissimilar potential and personal features and, therefore, demonstrate different approaches to innovation (Saripalle at el. 8).
Another important detail related to personal innovative capacities that help to identify its nature is that there is always an opportunity to enhance personal innovativeness. Many authors including Saripalle et al. support this supposition, making a comparison between the essential stages of development of flying insects (such as butterfly) and stages of innovation incubation in students or professionals. As is clear from their research, innovativeness presents individual strength of people that defines the competitiveness of the entire nation, and, considering that flexibility remains one of the primary characteristics of personal innovative capacity, there is a great number of measures that can be taken to decrease innovation deficiency.
To sum it up, it is obvious that the personal innovativeness of an individual remains a complex notion involving a great number of domains of competence that include specific knowledge, intuition, decision-making, and other spheres. Nevertheless, even though the development of personal innovativeness may be associated with rigid boundaries set by the strengths and weaknesses of a person, many researchers suppose that this competence can be developed in any individual under the stipulation that the methods chosen are appropriate for the particular situation.
Factors that Influence Innovative Capabilities
Before retrieving and assessing the methods that can be used as effective tools to enhance innovative capabilities, it is important to review the major factors that may influence innovativeness. There is a range of opinions on the topic, and the article by Zennouche et al. seems to present a substantial review of literature devoted to the problem (23). Using the method of content analysis during the analysis, the researchers have managed to retrieve the major themes reflecting the factors that influence innovativeness. The notion of innovativeness was reviewed on three different levels including individual, organizational, and group level. As it follows from the content analysis of six scholarly sources, three major factors have an impact on the development of innovative capacities on the individual level: cognition, personality, and motivation.
As for the cognition, this factor is characterized by the presence of specific knowledge and expertise. Importantly, the researchers also claim that this factor is strictly connected with the combination of divergent and convergent thinking. The former is the way of thinking that involves the ability of a person to consider existing multivariance during the decision-making process; people possessing divergent thinking are often regarded as more effective specialists due to their quickwittedness and swift reaction to changes. As for convergent thinking, it is believed that the majority of people demonstrate this very type of thinking that involves being meticulous about the particular plan of action. As it is proved by the researchers, a person with enhanced innovative capabilities is expected to be able to use both approaches to problem-solving which is a difficult task.
The second factor represented by personality is strictly interconnected with the ability of a person to analyze new experiences, free-thinking which excludes partiality, confidence in one’s abilities, inner monitoring, commitment to soaring to new heights, and personal responsibility (Zennouche et al. 31). Therefore, as can be seen from their analysis, individuals are expected to make efforts to refine themselves if they feel that their innovative capabilities need to be improved.
Another factor that is studied in connection with innovativeness on an individual level is motivation. The authors of the discussed study single out two types of motivation that have been mentioned in the reviewed articles: intrinsic and extrinsic (Zennouche et al. 31). Intrinsic motivation is based on personal experience or aspirations of a person; when people are intrinsically motivated, they perform activities that allow them to experience emotions. As it is clear from the term itself, extrinsic motivation is connected with external factors that encourage people to fulfill certain tasks. For instance, people can be motivated extrinsically if they understand that carrying out a certain objective will bring them substantial benefits. The researchers have found out that both factors make a significant contribution to the personal innovativeness of an individual because the latter can be found at the interface of external benefits and self-development that brings joy.
The unique character of innovativeness on a personal level can be seen if we compare it to the factors peculiar to innovativeness on upper levels. Thus, the development of the innovativeness of a working group or an organization requires people to improve their leadership skills and ensure cohesion in a group. In the case of personal innovativeness, an individual is supposed to bear all responsibility for the outcomes of actions.
In the end, the methods of enhancing personal innovative capabilities need to be designed in connection with the leading factors influencing the development of innovativeness: personality, cognition, and motivation.
Essential Skills Related to Innovative Capabilities
There is no doubt that the development of one’s innovative capacities is a difficult task that requires a strong sense of purpose, ambitiousness, and the willingness to become more valuable as a specialist. Otherwise, one’s attempts to develop innovativeness will not bring important results.
Speaking about the methods to develop personal innovative capabilities, it is necessary to say that there is a wide range of such methods, and the choice of the method needs to be based on the results of the analysis of one’s strong suits and weaknesses.
There are a great number of researchers who prefer to study personal innovative capacities of people observing their behavior as the latter may be the key helping to define the particular skills or personality traits that enhance people’s innovativeness. Thus, Patterson et al. conducted a review of the literature to define and analyze the characteristics of specialists possessing developed innovative capabilities (1). Acknowledging that innovativeness on a personal level involves a range of essential competencies, the researchers state that the primary resources for innovation within organizations include cognition, motivation, knowledge, behavior, personality, emotional state and even the proper family environment that encourages the personal growth of a specialist (Patterson et al. 9).
Innovativeness can be called a quality that is extremely difficult to be studied with the help of the scientific approach because different researchers tend to have various opinions on the way it is manifested in behavior, professional activity, and the way of thinking demonstrated by people. Considering this fact, the author of the given paper supposes that holding by an opinion expressed by the particular researcher would be a crucial mistake as the problem needs to be solved with the help of the multi-faceted approach.
Therefore, to define the methods, allowing people to develop their innovativeness, it can be necessary to single out the most significant skills that are usually associated with people who possess developed innovative capacities. To develop this ability, an individual needs to make efforts to improve each of the skills identified. Thus, having analyzed the components of personal innovativeness, it will be possible to review specific recommendations, helping to improve the particular skill.
About the skills associated with personal innovative capabilities, it is necessary to single out the following points:
- The ability to see problems clearly and predict negative consequences that they involve.
- The ability to generalize knowledge and distinguish between the key information and additional details.
- Spacious mind and wide interests (Brown 405).
- Self-reflection – the ability to study one’s personality, values, and evaluate the appropriateness of one’s actions and decisions.
- Communication skills or the ability to exchange information with other people in an effective way.
- Intuition and observation skills – the ability to note the details that are usually omitted.
- Thinking out of the box – the ability to apply creative approach during the decision-making process.
- Critical thinking – the ability to analyze facts and make conclusions concerning their credibility.
About the practical application of methods that can be used to enhance the skills mentioned and, therefore, develop one’s innovativeness on a personal level, it needs to be said that the process requires a series of stages. Thus, a person willing to enhance his or her innovative capabilities is supposed to conduct a kind of self-study helping to define the weak points to focus on strengthening the particular qualities. To be more precise, to start developing personal innovative capabilities, an individual needs to review the categories that have been presented, understand the differences between these skills and use different information to define whether each skill is developed enough.
During the assessment, it is possible to use different scales (for instance, give from 0 to 10 points to each skill) to define which spheres need improvement. Importantly, a person’s subjective opinion cannot serve as the only proof because many people tend to have a distorted self-image. Although the skills listed are connected, it is possible to define a few recommendations helping to develop each of them with the help of studies that have been conducted by different researchers.
Development of Predictive Capabilities
The professional life of any person is strictly interconnected with changing circumstances, and if it often happens that new situations involve potential threats and problems which may be unobvious.
There is an important element which is strictly connected with the development of predictive capabilities – the use of statistical data. There is no doubt that the ability to use the sets of data devoted to the particular topic provides people with an opportunity to better understand the external processes taking place in the world and, in such a manner, they process enough data to predict the outcomes of certain events based on their analysis. There is a range of examples proving that the use of statistics daily is extremely important; for instance, to exemplify the statement, it is necessary to remember weather forecasts (10 Everyday Reasons Why Statistics are Important par. 3).
Taking into account that people who know how to use statistical data for their purposes may use this ability to fulfill certain tasks, it can be supposed that professionals in the certain field studying systemized reviews related to their topics of interest will improve their chances to make an appropriate decision in case if a serious work-related problem occurs.
To identify potential threats easier, a person needs to pay more attention to the use of information that can be retrieved from personal experience and observations. Understanding this principle, a person who needs to develop his or her innovativeness can invent a range of exercises helping to develop predictive capabilities. For instance, it can be important to analyze the most interesting situations at work at the end of the day. Trying to imagine situations and recollect all the details, a person can try to identify at least ten problems that could occur and their consequences.
More than that, increased attention must be paid to case studies related to the specific professional field. Considering that predictive capabilities are closely interconnected with the range of problems that a person can imagine, every professional need to study materials devoted to specific issues that specialists in the field may need to solve.
Apart from that, to develop predictive capabilities, one needs to be able to analyze the current situation very quickly. To achieve this goal, it is possible to develop specific exercises on your own or have recourse to specialists or use IQ tests and puzzles.
Development of Generalization Skills
There is no doubt that the ability of a person to develop and implement innovations and be creative is closely interconnected with his or her skills related to summing up the relevant information. When it comes to the necessity to make a big decision that will have an impact on the lives of many people, a person should be able to distract from the numerous details surrounding the case to focus on the primary information. Therefore, a person possessing developed innovative capabilities should be able to distinguish between the primary and the secondary information to generalize the data.
There is a wide range of methods that can be used by people who want to generalize information faster and easier. In general, these methods are based on the use of additional means helping to visualize the information so that the primary and the secondary details will be obvious. Speaking about those specialists related to engineering, it is necessary to say that they are aware of various tools helping to present information such as diagrams, tables, and graphs.
Using them during the work, they avoid the need to get acquainted with the long texts because these tools help to present the primary information which is systematized. Similarly, these ways to present information can be used to develop the skills related to generalization. A person can design a few exercises helping to improve the skill. For instance, it is possible to recollect five difficult situations when you were supposed to make a choice and you did not have a lot of time to analyze the case.
Trying to remember all the details surrounding the case, design, and complete a table or a graph that would demonstrate the links between the details and show the priority of each detail. Based on the latter, summarize the case and define which decision would be made by a person capable of making generalizations and which decisions would be made by people distracted by the secondary details. After that, assess your skills, comparing your findings to the decisions that you made in those situations. Doing the exercise regularly, you will be able to enhance your generalization skills and, more importantly, recognize the mistakes you made in the past. Apart from your personal experience, it is possible to analyze and summarize difficult cases that can be found in books related to the sphere of your interests. In general, such exercises are expected to help people to improve their skills related to generalization.
Broadening Your Horizons
The nature of creativity and innovativeness is inextricably connected with the ability to use information that is already known in a new way. Consequently, to have more “material” to create and implement something new, a specialist needs to broaden his or her horizons and widen the range of interests. As is clear from many situations that occur at work, a person who is interested in many things is more likely to suggest an idea that would help to improve existing practices and attract more attention to the community to a company.
Considering that, anyone who would like to enhance his or her innovative capabilities needs to find the most appropriate way to extend the knowledge related to the world. What practices or exercises can be used to broaden the person’s horizons?
First, it is extremely important to be informed about the most recent news related to the sphere of your interests. To add new knowledge to your armory, you can choose one or two magazines for professionals in your field and read them from time to time to learn more about the latest trends in the sphere. Unfortunately, the everyday routine can be physically demanding, and it can be difficult to find time to search for the materials you need.
In this case, there is always an opportunity to find one interesting website where articles and short news related to the topic of your interest are published and subscribe to newsletter services offered on a website. Apart from that, another way to broaden your horizons is by traveling. Even though working people do not have an opportunity to travel as often as they want, the situation is better than it may seem to be because traveling does not necessarily involve visiting another country. Living in a certain city, we often tend to know a little about its history, and there is always a chance to bridge your knowledge gap and find a lot of interesting places in your city.
More than that, it is rather difficult to develop innovative capabilities in people who feel stressed because creativity and innovativeness require inspiration. Therefore, broadening your horizons and learning something new every day, you significantly improve your chances to become more effective at work and develop an idea that would bring value to your business partners, colleagues, or managers.
Another way that can help people to broaden their horizons is communication. There is no doubt that everyday communication connected with work-related questions can be boring but it is always possible to convert the circumstances to your use. Innovativeness involves a constant intellectual process, and communication can be presented as a process of helping people to exchange information they find relevant. Working with other people, it is important to use a chance to share news (colleagues can tell you about certain innovations in the field) or encourage other people to discuss their interests. At the same time, there can be an adverse effect if one participates in conversations devoted to irrelevant or unethical information such as rumors.
Continuing on the topic of broadening one’s horizons, it is important to remember the practice which is successfully used by managers of different organizations to encourage the development of personal innovativeness of their employees by extending their experience – the internalization of knowledge (Yu et al. 143). The process of knowledge internalization takes place when explicit knowledge which can be retrieved from any external source turns to tacit one; one of the brightest examples of knowledge internalization is the process of gaining new experience that involves the gradual development of essential skills and the necessity to control one’s actions during each stage of work.
With the lapse of time, the skills become sharpened, and it is no longer necessary to think about the mechanisms of work because certain information on working processes becomes implicit and is automatically used by the unconscious. A few ways including interpersonal communication or creation of appropriate working environment are believed to encourage the internalization of knowledge among employees in organizations. Employers are recommended to take the importance of knowledge internalization into account to make it easier for their subordinates to render decisions in case of urgent problems and help them to enhance their innovative capabilities.
Self-Reflection
Speaking about people who possess developed innovative capabilities, it is necessary to say that they consider themselves to be the severest critics of their work and ideas. Personal innovativeness is an ability that is likely to make anyone more individualistic or even selfish, and a person possessing the ability needs to be able to analyze his or her behavior, actions, or ideas to be more objective. It can be a difficult task to do a self-reflection and acknowledge all your mistakes, but it gives positive results related to all spheres of life.
Innovative capabilities can be enhanced with the help of self-reflection in case if the latter is done appropriately. An important method of self-reflection that can be used by numerous people is keeping records. For instance, at the end of the day, it may be helpful to devote at least fifteen minutes to self-reflective practices. A person can write down the short notes concerning the possible mistakes, the right decisions, and the things to be improved.
According to Travers et al., self-reflection can be regarded as one of the important practices encouraging both academic and personal growth (224).
Transformative learning is believed to be a significant concept that is associated with self-reflection. Those engineers who would like to enhance their innovative capabilities with the help of self-reflection can use the theory proposed by Mezirow. According to the theory, transformative learning includes three basic components. The first of them is a reflection, the second is the necessity to make conclusions based on the results, and the third is the implementation of the new ideas developed with the help of self-reflection into practice (Howie and Bagnall 816). To implement the theory, a person needs to pay focused attention to the possible improvements and develop effective methods to apply this knowledge in different spheres of his or her life.
Apart from that, the skill of self-reflection is strictly interconnected with the ability of a person to take risks and the latter is supposed to be one of the primary aspects of innovativeness in organizations (Amabile 123). Therefore, preparing oneself to take risks and stay confident can be regarded as an essential task for an individual who aims to develop his or her innovative capabilities and become a more effective specialist. According to one of the most recent studies in the field, emotional openness, extraversion, and impulsiveness belong to the number of factors that are strictly associated with higher risk appetites in students (Agnew and Harrison 15).
Development of Communication Skills
There is a link between the development of innovative capabilities of any professional and his or her communication skills. People possessing personal innovativeness are good at working with information; they learn something new and develop ideas very fast. Communication is the most common example of information exchange, and, to boot creativity and personal innovativeness, one may need to improve her or his communication skills.
People working in large companies have a range of opportunities to improve their communication skills daily. Speaking about the particular tips that can be useful for people in many spheres, it is possible to list a few basic recommendations. To begin with, having conversations with other people, it is necessary to ensure that gestures and facial expressions you are demonstrating align with the message that you need to convey (Pinola par. 2).
Otherwise, communication will be ineffective due to the doubts of other people concerning your sincerity. Also, focus on the expressions that you are using and avoid overloading the conversation with unnecessary details disconnected from its primary purpose. Apart from that, always think about your interlocutors and try to predict which words, expressions, or gestures need to be used to convey the message to the specific group of people. Characteristics that may need to be considered include age, occupation, or cultural identity. Additional methods can be found in the works by psychologists interested in interpersonal communication. For instance, the book by Barker explains the communication model and provides numerous methods helping to enhance written and oral communication skills (8).
Development of Intuition and Observation Skills
Intuition and observation play an important part in the life of any professional because these capabilities are closely interconnected with innovativeness. Being a special mechanism providing people with an opportunity to understand something without the use of logical thinking, intuition helps to make the right decisions. Speaking about the development of personal innovative capabilities, it is important to note that new practices always involve additional risks, and intuition often helps to minimize losses. The development of intuition is a controversial topic because many people tend to define it as something superficial. Despite that, it is possible to single out a few recommendations that can contribute to the development of “the sixth sense” and, therefore, to personal innovativeness of a professional.
Intuition involves the ability to listen to your mind, and it means that a person trying to develop it needs to devote more time to self-understanding. The methods helping to become more aware of one’s unobvious thoughts and fears are to be chosen based on the interests and life circumstances of a person. Thus, some people learn to listen to themselves using various religious practices whereas other people regard communicating with nature as the best way to learn more about themselves and develop intuition. Also, it is necessary to remember that the unconscious processes a lot of important information that often transforms into images people see in their dreams. Therefore, to develop your innovative capabilities, it can also be important to analyze your dreams, retrieve the most obvious signs, and identify the messages that the subconscious was conveying with their help.
Developed observation skills remain an essential component of personal innovativeness because the ability to notice something that other people tend to omit significantly increases the chances of success of a professional. There is a range of tools one can use to become a good observer. For instance, it is a good idea to solve puzzles or complete memory improvement exercises during your free time.
Thinking Out of the Box
As is clear from the term, personal innovativeness is an ability that is not related to teamwork. Developing their innovative capabilities, people tend to become more focused on their thoughts and goals, and their character becomes more obvious. Innovativeness and creativity make people different from each other, and fresh thinking is an important skill for any professional. Fresh thinking can be presented as a component of innovative capabilities as it usually has a positive influence on the process of problem-solving – people who are capable of thinking outside of the box become high-value employees as their nonstandard approach contributes to the prosperity of the entire company. Continuing on the topic of unconventional thinking, it is necessary to say that it can be regarded as a talent that is manifested in a few people. At the same time, even a person who tends to operate with stereotypes and the most common assumptions while performing a task has a chance to develop unconventional thinking.
There are special exercises designed for children that help them to improve this skill, but adults need to utilize another approach to achieve great results and develop their innovative capabilities. Trying to develop lateral thinking, it is important to pay focused attention to puzzles and logical problems that are rather difficult to solve. Having chosen a few puzzles that you like, try to find as many solutions as possible for each of them, using different approaches and perspectives. Such training would be extremely useful for the brain of an adult because the necessity to find a lot of possible solutions encourages people to start thinking outside of the box. Also, it is important to mention that the solutions do not need to be perfect – instead, they need to be dissimilar and demonstrate that a person is capable of looking at the problem from different perspectives.
What is more, anyone who would like to develop his or her innovative capabilities using improving lateral thinking can use the works of numerous researchers interested in the problem. Setting about fulfilling this difficult task, it is critical to consider that two hemispheres of the brain are still supposed to be performing different functions, and it causes dissimilarities between left-handers and right-handers. As for the latter, they may need to make additional efforts to develop their right hemisphere, and there is a good book that presents numerous tips on how to make your brain work differently; the book that may be used is “The development of the right hemisphere” written by Marilee Zdenek (How to Develop the Right Hemisphere of the Brain par.3).
Similarly, for left-handers, it may be important to increase the number of tasks that they perform using the right hand. Nevertheless, it is important to say that these recommendations need to be considered by right-handers in the first instance. The case is that living in a world where almost everything is made for right-handers, left-handed people are already urged to change their habits and do certain things just like right-handed people.
Development of Critical Thinking
Development of critical thinking is another task that helps to improve the innovative capabilities of a person because this skill is responsible for the ability to analyze the separate facts with an unbiased eye and find numerous links between them. In general, critical thinking is often regarded in connection with unbelief, skepticism, and the willingness to check every fact become accepting it as the truth. Specialists whose activity is interconnected with engineering need to develop critical thinking because every person regardless of his or her position in the hierarchy can make mistakes, and accepting everything that other people say often entails serious problems.
A specialist is not supposed to doubt everything and try to find mistakes related to decisions made by the upper management because anyone who behaves like that disrupts the most important working practices that exist in a company, and it can result in numerous losses. At the same time, innovative capabilities involve critical attitude to certain facts and sometimes critical thinking of employees can prevent the upper management from the implementation of red ink operations. As is clear from these assumptions, critical thinking contributes to the development of innovative capabilities of a person, but the latter is expected to strike the right balance between criticism and readiness to comply with any request of the upper management to become an effective part of a team.
People who lack critical thinking can develop it using different tools and methods. There is no doubt that the ability to withstand the influence of stereotypes and generally accepted values is inextricably connected with reasoning. There is a range of exercises that are used to develop critical thinking skills in children, and they can also be taken as a basis by adults. For instance, a lot of exercises are aimed at teaching children to distinguish between facts and perceptions – for adults, it would be appropriate to improve their critical thinking by analyzing feature materials related to the topics which attract them (McPeck 21). The exercise allows people to understand that a lot of the information they would regard as the objective truth is presented by individual judgments of the author.
Those who have developed critical thinking skills usually form their opinions on controversial questions after a thorough logical analysis. Therefore, another way to develop critical thinking and, therefore, enhance your innovative capabilities is to reconsider certain stereotypes that influence your decision-making. To improve your critical thinking skills, it can be necessary to pay attention to your stereotypes. Thus, remember five or more things, famous people, or theories that you hate even though you know a little about them. Then, collect the detailed and, what is more important, the objective information on the positions from your list and study the topics thoroughly. During the work, you can find out that your opinion related to these ideas or people was biased due to the influence of stereotypes and the lack of knowledge. Using this rather time-consuming exercise, one can ensure that his or her opinions are sometimes based on errors of judgment that occur due to the lack of knowledge.
How to Develop Personal Innovative Capabilities: Recommendations
It is obvious from the previous sections of the term paper that innovative capabilities on an individual level are associated with a substantial number of skills to be developed. Summarizing the recommendations that can help to enhance one’s innovativeness, it is important to mention that, due to the wide range of practices and methods that can be used for the discussed purpose, the decision on the preferred practices needs to follow an objective and substantial self-analysis.
Thus, the ability to predict outcomes and see potential threats can be improved with the help of studying how to use statistics related to any professional field for more accurate decision-making, the use of simple exercises based on the necessity to reconsider situations from the past to find the unnoticed threats. More than that, credible sources touching upon the most urgent problems in the professional field can be studied for the discussed purpose.
To enhance skills related to generalization, an individual can continue self-education and focus on the topic of data systematization creating individual tasks using difficult cases and understanding the interconnection of factors and circumstances.
Enhancing personal innovativeness by broadening his or her horizons, a person may start reading a few journals for specialists in the particular field to stay informed about the most recent news, travel more often to gain new experience, communicate with colleagues, and internalize new knowledge helping to improve job performance.
The innovative capabilities of a person can also be enhanced with the help of self-reflection. The particular methods that are aimed at improving this skill include keeping records at the end of the day to analyze one’s thoughts and identify possible mistakes and the use of transformative learning including three components: reflection, concluding, and implementation. Enhancing the ability to take risks can also be an effective approach to improving personal innovativeness.
Communication skills that present another component of personal innovative capabilities can be improved if a person tries to reduce the use of unnecessary words to make his or her messages clearer. Apart from that, the methods can include the use of popular psychology books.
To develop intuition and observation skills, some people can use religious practices. About more common methods, it is learning to listen to yourself by analyzing dreams and the messages of the subconscious. At the same time, observation skills can be enhanced with the help of memory improvement exercises or puzzles.
Developing lateral thinking is another task related to enhancing personal innovativeness. To fulfill it, one may solve logical problems or puzzles and try to use the non-dominant arm more often to encourage the active work of two hemispheres of the brain.
To enhance critical thinking skills, adult people can redesign the exercises for children and analyze specific feature materials to distinguish between facts and opinions. Also, the exercises helping people to identify common perceptions having an impact on their behavior or attitudes and reconsider them can be helpful.
Conclusion
In the end, the development of personal innovative capacities involves cultivating numerous abilities and skills. Thus, the particular tasks that need to be fulfilled to achieve this goal include enhancing predictive capabilities, learning to generalize knowledge, broadening one’s horizons, practicing self-reflection, improving communication skills, and developing intuition. More than that, a person trying to enhance his or her innovative capabilities needs to pay more attention to practices and exercises helping to develop lateral thinking and the ability to critically analyze information. As is clear from the review of practices that encourage the positive changes related to these skills, it is important to note that the majority of methods are related to the use of simple exercises that do not require special equipment and can be transformed based on the needs of a particular person.
What is more, considering that every person has unique strengths and weaknesses, it is necessary to thoroughly analyze one’s situation to define the skills that are the least developed to achieve great results.
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