The Innovator's DNA - "Networking"

(This is from Edition 69 of The Upleveler, our weekly smartletter)

Can we use TikTok for learning and quizzing?

The book The Innovators' DNA talks about five traits common to innovators: the authors term them “discovery skills”. These five discovery skills are association, observation, networking, questioning and experimentation. In Edition 60 of our smartletter, we discussed association. Now, let’s look at ‘networking’.

A lot has been said and written about networking. But in the context of innovation, networking is about ‘ideas’ more than about “people”.

Executives who are “delivery-oriented” tend to use networking to access resources: business, funds, information, influence etc. In contrast, “discovery-oriented” innovators use it to seek different perspectives that enrich and potentially spread an idea. Such 'idea networking' enables people from diverse perspectives to add value to an idea and make it better.

However, such networks are not readily available. Your ‘off-the-shelf’ networks typically consist of people with very homogeneous backgrounds (same profession/education/thinking etc.) So it becomes imperative for you as an individual to deliberately build an idea network and use it to grow and spread ideas.

Here are some tips from one of the authors to develop your ‘idea networking’ skills:

1. Diversify your network

   Identify and meet people who are different from you along various dimensions. Seek breadth of country of origin, industry, gender, profession, age, political views etc.

2. Start ‘mealtime networking’

   Aim to have lunch with someone from a different background at least once a week.

3. Out of your comfort zone

   Conferences can be great places to find people from different backgrounds - only if you choose the right conferences. For every conference from your area of expertise, try to attend one which is not so closely related to your area!

4. Sounding board sessions

   Try to be a part of a creative community that holds sounding board sessions for people with different ideas. If you can’t find one, start your own community!

5. Invite an outsider

   Invite a smart person from a different point of view to come and meet your team.

For Choose To Thinq, our mailing list is one component of our idea network! Let’s put this to test:

The media platform TikTok has grown immensely over the last year. But it is not intuitively associated with learning ( the platform is making a big push for Edutok, where their videos are meant for learning).

Let's say we applied Association (the first Innovators' DNA trait) to begin mulling on how to use TikTok for two of our sister brands - Thinq2Win (all about quizzing) and Iconiq India (all about knowing India). What do you think we could do?

Ideas? Suggestions? Know someone who’s already doing this? Let us know in the comments section.

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