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Innovation survey: results summary

Last month I ran an open survey on innovation to help with my book in progress. Nearly 100 people from scientists, to programers, to writers to researchers, volunteered their time and answered my questions. The results were amazing and I’m still filtering through the stories and data.

Here are three samples from the survey:

Defining innovation. Right off the bat, there was contention around the word itself. 60% of respondents chose to add their own defintions, some paragraphs long.

Techniques for finding ideas. I made a list of popular creativity and idea generation techniques and allowed people to choose as many as they used. Surprisingly, looking at other domains scored higher than the all stallwart brainstorming.

Greatest innovator in history. This was mostly for fun and to provke opinions, which it did. Largely this suffers from popularity vs. credibility: most people don’t know who Tesla was, and as a result he scored worse than Steve Jobs. Best write in votes included “me”, “My mom”, and “God”.

There’s plenty more but that’s enough for now – much of the survey asked for stories and opinions which are difficult to summarize, but I’m reading them all and will report on any trends.

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

If you didn’t contribute, it’s not too late: if you see yourself as an innovator or have opinions on how it’s done, the survey is still open for submissions – I’d love to hear from you.