ESIP and Innovation

Innovation is a common topic in many discussions, but a clear definiton remains elusive. This question: what is it that makes people innovative, was the topic of a recent study by Jeffrey H. Dyer, Hal B. Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen. Their conclusion was that innovators consistently do four things:

• Questioning allows innovators to break out of the status quo and consider new possibilities.
• Through observing, innovators detect small behavioral details—in the activities of customers, suppliers, and other companies—that suggest new ways of doing things.
• In experimenting they relentlessly try on new experiences and explore the world.
• And through networking with individuals from diverse backgrounds, they gain radically different perspectives.

and these four patterns of action together help innovators associate to cultivate new insights.

If you ask ESIP members about benefits they get from participating in ESIP activities and meetings, many mention these components of innovation in their answers (2012 Winter Meeting Survey). These habits and thought processes provide a framework of specific actions that might be helpful in understanding, explaining to others, what it is about ESIP that makes members fired up after a meeting or a telecon and how to continually creating an innovative space for the Earth science informatics community to work.

What specific ESIP events have helped members bring innovative ideas back from ESIP meetings to their organizations? How have other ESIP members helped to effectively bring those ideas to fruition?

Is that because some element of ESIP's organization makes it somehow inherently innovative? Or, is it because ESIP somehow manages to attract an inherently innovative slice of the earth science data community? If it is the latter, what is it about the people that make up ESIP that makes them innovative?

This discussion starts with some ideas from The Innovator's DNA. It will be filled out by stories that members tell!

Associating

Associating, or the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields, is central to the innovator’s DNA.