By inter­view­ing and sur­vey­ing 3,500 vision­ary entre­pre­neurs over a six-year period, a pair of pro­fes­sors believe they have iden­ti­fied the five habits and skills com­mon to ‘cre­ative exec­u­tives’ that dis­tin­guish them from the rest:

  • Asso­ci­at­ing: the skill of con­nect­ing seem­ingly unre­lated ques­tions, prob­lems and ideas.
  • Ques­tion­ing, espe­cially “ques­tions that chal­lenge the sta­tus quo and open up the big­ger picture”.
  • Close obser­va­tion of details, par­tic­u­larly of people’s behaviour.
  • Exper­i­men­ta­tion.
  • “Net­work­ing with smart peo­ple who have lit­tle in com­mon with them, but from whom they can learn”.

In this Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cle the two researches go on to talk of the key role inquis­i­tive­ness plays in creativity–that same curios­ity one of the researchers found through­out a sim­i­lar 20-year study look­ing at “great global lead­ers” and that you find in children.

We […] believe that the most inno­v­a­tive entre­pre­neurs were very lucky to have been raised in an atmos­phere where inquis­i­tive­ness was encour­aged. We were stuck by the sto­ries they told about being sus­tained by peo­ple who cared about exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration. Some­times these peo­ple were rel­a­tives, but some­times they were neigh­bors, teach­ers or other influ­en­tial adults. A num­ber of the inno­v­a­tive entre­pre­neurs also went to Montes­sori schools, where they learned to fol­low their curiosity.

via Ben Cas­nocha