CHAPTER 2

What Is the Innovation Code?

There is something indulgent—even sinful—about taking a personality test. Whether you’re curling up on the couch to take a Cosmo quiz about what kind of lover you are or sitting down at your laptop to complete the full 222-question Myers-Briggs questionnaire, you’re turning away, if only for a brief moment, from the rest of the world to find out a little bit about yourself. Personality tests appeal to our desire for self-knowledge, but they also tap into our inner narcissists. That’s why they’re so undeniably, hypnotically, and addictively fun: there’s something weirdly rewarding about recognizing ourselves in categories.

That’s also why they’re often limiting: because they only reveal things about ourselves (and things we usually already know) and not anything about the other people around us. The reality is that we exist in relation to other people, and so, if we want a full understanding of how we function in our worlds, we need to learn things about everyone else—from the people we love most to the people we clash with.

How can a personality test tell us about other people? We might try taking these exams from perspectives outside of our own to get into diverse mindsets that might unsettle and broaden our own thinking. Yet this sounds oxymoronic: a personality test about everyone else but us. We do, after all, have to keep ourselves in the picture.

A Relational
Personality Test

The solution is not a selfless personality test but a relational one—one that indicates types in relation to other types, showing how they interact and define each other rather than exist as fixed points on a scale of unchanging identity.

This is where the Innovation Code comes in. The Innovation Code is a sense-making tool to identify, differentiate, and categorize the dominant worldviews we use to approach innovation. Each of these dominant worldviews is unique and important on its own. But it is their interactions that produce meaningful innovation. The Innovation Code spells out the steps to harness the energy that emerges not from the harmony, but from the conflicts between these dominant worldviews to create sustainable innovation practices.

There are four different ways of thinking that push and pull against each other: the Artist, the Engineer, the Sage, and the Athlete. These are dynamic dominant worldviews that do not exist in a vacuum but define themselves in relation to their counterparts. The paradox of growth and innovation is that they are born from the tension and constructive conflict of these opposing personalities and methodologies.

As a framework for identifying your own dominant worldview, the Innovation Code also provides the tools for understanding everyone else, for seeing the other kinds of personalities and approaches that you need to surround yourself with. While typical personality tests claim to tell us who we as individuals are as they classify people in rigid groups, the Innovation Code is a living system that takes into account ever-changing interpersonal dynamics. It tells you not just who you are, but also who you’re not, who your allies and counterparts are, what brings you all together, and, most importantly, what keeps you all apart.

The Artist vs.
the Engineer

The Artist embraces revolutionary growth through wild experimentation and an extreme rejection of conventions. These radical explorers are drawn to breakthrough innovation projects. They create grand visions and are likely to try unexpected solutions. Their core competency is imagination. John Belushi, Coco Chanel, Duke Ellington, and Walt Disney all embody the Artist worldview as their deeply original, even whimsical or offbeat projects come out of the desire for something totally new. While this approach provides the greatest magnitude of growth, it also brings the greatest risk.

At the opposite end of the innovation spectrum from the Artist is the Engineer. These are individuals who seek efficiency and quality and who depend on processes. They are highly disciplined and see the value of systems and bureaucracy. Marie Curie, Emily Post, Carl Sagan, and Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) are all classic Engineers who developed streamlined procedures that could be replicated and reapplied widely. Although the Engineer’s approach minimizes the possibility of failure, this methodical march of progress often also brings with it unwanted bureaucracy.

The fundamental difference between the Artist and the Engineer is in the magnitude of innovation. The risky Artist wants breakthrough innovation that can disrupt the way we think and live. The reliable Engineer prefers to tinker with the current system and continuously improve every aspect. Despite—or, really, because of—their contradictory outlooks, those who have an Engineer’s attitude and those who identify with the Artist worldview make a wonderful pair, complementing extreme creativity with the reliability of process.

The Sage vs.
the Athlete

Those who have the Sage dominant worldview seek out connection, harmony, and togetherness. They are mentors, facilitators, and team-builders who work with a set of shared values. Their core competency is empathy as they listen carefully and thoughtfully to others, gaining a deep understanding of their peers’ desires and needs. Florence Nightingale, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Oprah Winfrey, and Jostein Solheim (CEO of Ben & Jerry’s) all exemplify this dominant worldview. Their ability to connect with and influence other people is a testament to their remarkable capacity to empathize with them. The Sage is typically associated with the slowest forms of growth because this approach focuses on building the underlying organizational culture and competencies required to sustain it. But the upside of this slowness is its long-term stability: once you establish a sense of community, it can last for many generations.

The Athlete, which is the opposite of the Sage, represents a Darwinist approach that focuses on competition where the strong prevail at the expense of the weak. These kinds of people are often results-driven workhorses. While Sages slowly and patiently build a community and connect with others, Athletes produce profit and speed. They set concrete goals for themselves and meet those goals. Their core competency is courage. Katherine Hepburn, Angela Merkel, Martha Stewart, and Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) all epitomize the Athlete’s worldview. This form of growth is the fastest of all four, but is not typically sustainable because its “sweatshop” approach shows little concern for the development of others.

The Athlete and the Sage are opposites in the speed in which they innovate. The Athlete understands that time is essential for innovation. Innovation can go sour like milk. Innovative products from last year are no longer on the Christmas list this year. They know they need to commercialize ideas as fast as they can. On the other hand, the Sage understands that the only way to sustainable innovation is to build a deep competency to innovate, which is through developing the innovation culture and practices inside the organization. For all of their apparent differences, the Athlete and the Sage can work well together, combining the long-term focus on values and culture with the short-term emphasis on tangible outcomes.

Table 1, shown below, deciphers how the four dominant worldviews hold distinctive values and approach the world through different perspectives.

TABLE 1. FOUR DOMINANT WORLDVIEWS

In addition to representing different kinds of individuals, each of the four dominant worldviews also represents different kinds of organizational identities. That is, each corresponds to a larger group dynamic. Table 2 below shows how each dominant worldview functions in the individual and organizational levels.

The Self is, of course, much more complicated than a mere personality type. We are a combination of everything. But, despite our quirks and idiosyncrasies, our surprising depths and funny inconsistencies, we all do have an underlying dominant worldview that likely fits one of the four identities.

The challenge is in both embracing and overcoming that dominant worldview. We need to make use of our strengths but also be aware of our shortcomings and surround ourselves with people who approach things differently than we do. It’s comfortable and easy to stick with the things we believe, but by doing so we’re also stifling our ability to be innovative. To know the Self is to know other people’s selves, too.

TABLE 2. INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS

Example:
The Dreamer Meets the Martinet

Consider the story of Sanne. In her youth in the Netherlands, Sanne was a wildly imaginative and artistic girl. She liked to paint colorful and unwieldy murals on the walls of her garage, write fantasy stories in her journals, and perform overly dramatic plays with heroic acts of derring-do for friends and family. It was no surprise that Sanne went on to be a highly successful video game designer, creating imaginative worlds of vibrant characters. Her small boutique company was a mélange of free spirits, eccentrics, and assorted misfits.

While most of their games enjoyed a cult following, one of them became an enormous hit. This brought Sanne’s small company to the attention of a number of very large corporations looking for the next big thing. A leading Japanese gaming company offered Sanne an enormous amount of money to acquire her firm with the condition that Sanne stayed on for the next three years to oversee the design and development of a wide array of new video games. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Sanne agreed to the deal and moved her family, as well as some key members of her staff, to the corporation’s game design facility in San Diego.

Sanne reported directly to the Chief Technology Officer, Franklin, who had worked in the military sector for 25 years before joining the gaming giant. Much more professional than he was personable, Franklin based his objective judgments on data. A few years away from retirement, he was frustrated that the company had just acquired yet another small boutique software firm without consulting him. The small firms were notorious for using unconventional software languages and design techniques. In Franklin’s eyes, integrating the new games of these idiosyncratic firms into the existing technology platform of his streamlined organization was deeply difficult—a nuisance and a disruption. Franklin wished that these smaller companies understood the difference between designing a game for a niche market and developing one that works perfectly every time within the rigid industry standards for the gaming consoles, computers, and smartphones that most people use.

Sanne knew that working in a larger firm would be challenging. What she didn’t anticipate was just how much the firm’s creative decisions were based more on corporate hierarchy than the desire to produce imaginative products. Yet even though she was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the firm’s elaborate organizational structure and complex processes, Sanne found her new coworkers highly skilled, deeply committed, and generally interesting. She was even more amazed at how well they synchronized all the resources at their disposal to get a game into production and ultimately to the gaming market. This large company deeply understood how to take an idea and get it to scale.

Uncomfortable with her new situation, but optimistic, Sanne proposed an off-site meeting with Franklin’s senior staff and her own to see if there was a way to create highly unique games using a standardized process. Franklin reluctantly agreed.

The first meeting didn’t go well. They could barely agree on a location, let alone a shared goal or approach to software development. Key members of Sanne’s original staff were so frustrated that they resigned and cashed out. Two senior leaders from Franklin’s team became passive-aggressive and made it impossible to book the next meeting on their schedules.

But Sanne and Franklin decided to try to meet again. This time, they asked both teams to create a metaphor for the entire software development process. The exercise seemed silly to many of the participants. Nevertheless, they did their best to find a suitable analogy for their combined work: an aquarium, a beehive, and a NASCAR race, just to name a few.

Finally, they stumbled upon the metaphor of a vegetable garden. The combined teams then went into a detailed description of a productive garden. This step was promising, but they wanted to take it even further. For the next meeting, they invited an artist to come and paint a picture of their ideal garden. The artist created a sumptuous scene with bright red peppers reaching for the yellow sun, well-watered rich soil, and honeybees drifting above. Sensing that Franklin was getting a little impatient with the whole shared vision “painting thing,” Sanne asked him to translate the picture back into his own operation. Franklin didn’t understand what she meant. But some members of his team gave it a try: the water was the unseen and underlying process necessary for all sustainable software development, a swarm of bees were marketing spreading pollen from one plant to the next, the vegetables were the delicious games, and the sun represented customers, for without their nurturing energy, nothing grows. The more they translated the painting into the operational details of the design and development process, the clearer it became how the design of the game and its development and distribution were all interrelated.

Franklin then asked the combined teams to describe the current state of their garden and asked the painter to paint it: dry soil in need of water, a single bee buzzing above, shriveled and undersized vegetables, and the setting sun. Now they had two paintings—one of a beautiful garden and one in need of attention. In the two images, the team saw both the solution and the problem. They continued to work through the metaphor of how to transform their current garden into their desired garden. Vision and process were finally integrated. Roles and responsibilities became clear, and tasks were assigned.

Sanne, the Artist, and Franklin, the Engineer, soon realized that they could help each other succeed. They still frequently disagreed but worked together to find hybrid solutions. Sanne would bring imaginative ideas to Franklin and ask for his thoughts on how to make it work. Sometimes Sanne would have to limit the uniqueness of her design, while other times Franklin would have to incorporate a new technique into his standardized development process. Over time, the two became a dynamic team. Franklin eventually retired and Sanne became the CEO of the company, which prospers to this very day.

In the end, what both Franklin and Sanne understood beautifully was their own messiness—their own flaws and shortcomings. It was this great self-insight that allowed them to accept the necessity of their seeming opponents. They had the potential to become rivals, but instead they became collaborators. This isn’t to say that they got along. In fact, their clashing was the very energy that made their joint efforts so successful. In the next chapter, we’ll look more deeply at how and when conflict becomes constructive and why that conflict is actually the best way to produce something entirely new.

Summary

The Innovation Code presents four dominant worldviews—the main opposing approaches to growth and creativity: the Artist, the Engineer, the Sage, and the Athlete. For all our individual complexity, we all have one overpowering identity. Innovating is about understanding the gifts of that identity but also about seeing its shortcomings so we can seek out the people who will make up for those shortcomings.