The work of innovation culminates in execution.  But getting there is a journey with hurdles to overcome.  You need innovation confidence to face corporate antibodies, deal with setbacks, and keep innovating.  Today’s show focuses on how to build innovation confidence.  Innovation confidence will help get your ideas off the ground and on track.

Gifted or Skilled

Innovation is not a special gift bestowed on a select few.  Innovation is a set of skills and abilities. You can learn, practice, and perfect them.  This has been my goal in doing this show for 14 plus years. I want to help you perfect your innovation skills and abilities. What is innovation confidence?  It is self-assurance arising from one’s innovation abilities.  Building innovation confidence is a process. It takes time and practical experience.   Learn the skills and use them in a practical setting.  This will build innovation confidence.

Start Building

To begin building innovation confidence, you need to take stock.  Determine your innovation strengths and weaknesses.

Innovation Strengths:

Identify your innovation core strengths.  Highlight those strengths in your daily work.  Find opportunities to leverage them. Others will recognize you as innovative.  This will build your innovation confidence. Are there limited opportunities to highlight your strengths in your current role?  Volunteer for another team. Seek out a job that allows you to exercise your strengths daily.

Innovation Weaknesses:

Find the weaknesses in your innovation skill sets.  Then, improve them.

Some ways to improve weak areas and build innovation confidence:

Take every opportunity to learn.

A good start – listening to this show.

Innovation conferences and YouTube videos are great ways to learn.

Find a community.

Seek people who know and encourage innovation.

We created The Innovators Community for that purpose.

Learn by doing.

Gain practical experience.

Volunteer for a project in your weak area.

Do Something Scary

To build innovation confidence, I challenge you to do this exercise.  Try one thing that scares you every day. Getting out of your comfort zone helps tackle the fears holding you back from succeeding in innovation.  Fear is False Evidence that Appears Real. With fear, we tend to exaggerate the negative impact of trying something new or different.  

This may come as a surprise.  I am an introvert. As CTO at HP, I stepped out of my comfort zone to understand customers.  I would observe potential HP customers at Best Buy. If a customer looked at HP products, but purchased a competitor’s, I would approach.  After handing out my business card, I would ask a few questions. Terrified as I was initially, I found people were nice and willing to give feedback.

What in the innovation skill sets scares you?  Try it every day. Get over that fear and build innovation confidence.

The Critic

Another step to innovation confidence – silence the inner critic.  False evidence is that negative self-talk. We tend to be more negative about ourselves than others are.  Do you struggle with this? Your inner critic is likely overactive and inaccurate. This ties into my recent TEDx Talk.  If you haven’t listened to it,