An analysis of the common characteristics of 35 innovators who has been chosen by Harvard, to know what are the common traits they possess so they became successful.

1. Innovation Management
Mid-term
Innovators under 35
EMBA Strategy and Leadership Program
Instructor: Dr. Rachid Alami
Students: Mustafa Watar

2. Introduction:
I would like to start with a general definition of innovation and what it is, Innovation is the
process and outcome of creating something new, which is also of value.
Innovation involves the whole process from opportunity identification, ideation or invention to
development, prototyping, production marketing and sales (Schumpeter), “innovation
distinguishes between leaders and followers” Steve Jobs, “innovation is about turning a vision
into new products or services” Google CEO Eric Schmidt. However, we are living in a complex
environment and dynamic world where innovation and entrepreneurship are occupying decisive
role in the economy development; according to Schumpeter “carrying out innovation is the only
function that is fundamental in history”.
If we want our organizations to grow as innovative companies and being recognized as
innovators in their industries we need more innovative leaders who have the ability to create new
ideas and turn them into technologies into assets that will transform their businesses, innovators
usually have common sense of innovation and characteristics which enables them to come up
with new ideas and made them turn a vision into new ideas and new products or service and even
re-imagining existing product or service in a different way which leads eventually to innovation,
in general innovators have some common characteristics which are described as follows but not
limited to:
 Creative: Innovators do things in a different way or inventing new thing that has not been
used before, additionally the innovators are the people who believed the idea and
embrace it and prepared the environment in order to enable the employees by giving them
the right tools and resources to challenge the status quo and push boundaries and achieve
growth.
 Leaders: Innovators and leaders are The two sides of the same coin innovators are the
leaders who committed to creating dynamic, highly productive and value based
organization that attract people with high capabilities and passionate about their jobs, by
clarifying their roles and responsibilities, actually they provide those people with the
opportunity to grow and achieve their goals.
 Innovators are team oriented and empower others: Innovators encourage and team spirit
where diversity and embrace it and welcome peoples’ ideas which present different
points of view to fully grasp the complexity of economic, technological and other
challenges.
 Innovators are risk takers: Innovators are not taking shortcuts and are not afraid of going
after more complex solutions, even if it means taking higher risks.
 Innovators are visionary: Innovators understand innovation is not a one-time thing and
those start-up companies as well as those that are several generations old have to
continuously reach above and beyond what they have done before to stay competitive.

3. This requires innovators to be effective change managers who know how to navigate
through resistance to their ideas.
 Innovators believe in themselves and in others abilities to innovate and enhance the
humanity to survive and create a world with better conditions and even solve what others
mistaken
 Innovators are not traditional “maverick”: Innovators believe that the paying too much
attention to the traditional practices of business metrics can be barrier to the company’s
growth and creative ideas.
 Innovators are initiative: Innovators contribute new, unconventional ideas of their own.
 Have a strong customer oriented: an innovator first focus is what the customers need is
which their center of interest become. They see what in the customers’ minds they always
communicate with them and ask questions about their needs and wants.
 Are persuasive. These individuals were highly effective in getting others to accept good
ideas. They did not push or force their ideas onto their teams. Instead, they presented
ideas with enthusiasm and conviction, and the team willingly followed.
 Innovators are continually come up with new ideas: innovators never stop creating new
ideas whether these ideas are built on an original product or it is complete new idea,
whether it is individual or team work resulted.
The common characteristics of 7 innovators under 35:
In this paragraph I will present 10 innovators and analyzes them to discover the common
characteristics between 10 which could leads to the most effective characteristics that to be
innovator should have these traits in the first place, this analysis could bring real practice and
drop down on real innovators and their experiences and inventions.
RICHARD LUNT
 Continually improve: Lunt don’t stop improving his invention he keep improving the
product’s cost quality and other features in order to make it available to everyone
“The technology could boost conventionalphotovoltaic designs, too. If included as a Coating on a standard
solar panel, Lunt says, the new materials could increase the panel’s power output by converting more of the
sun’s energy to electricity. Lunt, materials scientist based at Michigan State University, has concocted a
combination of see-through materials that convert ultraviolet and infrared light to wavelengths that are then
directed to photovoltaic cells at the edges of the screens. Because this design is simpler than the original
approach of putting transparent solar cells directly on the surface of a screen, it could be cheaper to
manufacture, especially for bigger devices”
 Visionary: Lunt was see his invention as an asset in the future he looks to it something
that the humanity would depend on later on to save power and environment.

4. “R. Lunt Believes his transparent solar-cell technology could cut the cost of traditional thin-film solar
products significantly. Imagine a world where every window-laden skyscraper generates its own solar
power, where the skylights in your ceiling are a source of light and electricity, and where your iphone
charges itself through the power of the sun”
 Strong customer focus: R. Lunt’s invention “transparent solar-cell technology” was
inspired from the humanity need for sustainable source of power where they can use it
everywhere instead of their glass windows and mobile phone screens.
“Lunt invented solar cells you can see through. They’re made of molecules that absorb ultraviolet and
infrared light—wavelengths that we can’t see—and convert it into electricity while letting visible light
through. Applied as a coating on the screen of a phone or smart watch, they generate power so the gadget
lasts longer between charges.”
LISA SEACAT DELUCA
 Encourage and motivate people and optimistic: Lis S. Deluca she had bright view for the
future of its invention and how the world would be better place to live in as she says
“The idea generation isn’t the slow part,” DeLuca says. “Anyone can come up with ideas very quickly. It’s
taking the time to write them down and do research to figure out if it’s a great idea or how to make it an
even better idea—that’s really the bottleneck in innovation.”
 Initiative: Lisa S. Deluca as innovator she started and proposed of its inventions and she
was thinking all of time for solutions to problems where no one else was thinking in the
same way she thought
“Most of that research happens outside the office on nights and weekends. By day, she works on mobile
computing and commerce for IBM. Her latest project is an app for retailers that can send shoppers targeted
offers based on their location in a store. DeLuca has filed nine patents related to the app and is testing out
the necessary Bluetooth beacons in her own home. She also recently bought a 3-D printer that she plans to
use for prototyping ideas. First up: a Fitbit key chain for her husband, who always forgets his fitness
tracker on his way to work.”
 Innovators are continually come up with new ideas: Lisa S. Deluca was not only
improving coming up with new ideas for its existing inventions she also never stopped
inventing new products and solutions for people’s lives
“Her inventions include a way for people on conference calls to get alerts when a certain topic comes up or
a certain person starts talking; a systemthat can guide cell-phone users as they walk and talk so they don’t
lose service; a necklace that lights up every time a given Twitter hashtag is used; and a locator service in
cars that can track items like, say, a wallet that falls under the seat.”
PATRICK COLLISON

5.  Risk taker: P. Collison he risked that the market might not except such an idea specially
his idea was built on trust where flows and people need to feel secure and to be
convinced about the idea, as Collison says
“We experienced firsthand the difficulty of accepting online payments. We were just baffled at how
convoluted and awkward the process appeared to be.”
 Welcome others opinions and feedbacks: P. Collison excepts his brother’s opinion about their
invention by sharing his entire idea with him and even he benefits from others experience
P. Collison says
“The same way Google exists as a foundational component of the Internet around information retrieval, it
felt like there should be a developer-focused, instant-setup payment platform. Many people in financial
services told us it couldn’t work.”
 Customer focus and self-confident: his invention was inspired by the disability of his brother
and need for people with disabilities and their needs to purchase while they are at home
where they don’t have to go out and suffer as P. Collison says
“Making it so easy to participate in the online economy has a far larger effect than one might imagine.
We’re enabling new business models, like crowdfunding. And mobile marketplaces, like Lyft, Postmates,
and Instacart. That enables more people in society to take advantage of these services.”
YEVGEN BORODIN
 Initiative: Y. Borodin he felt the need of people for new invention where they can use
nonverbal needed software to help specially the blind people for a software which can
talk and receive commands by voice as Y. Borodin says
“Blind people easily [take] far longer to do simple computer tasks than others do, and I decided that I had
to do something about it”
 Creative: his idea was a complete new and special where he developed a software can
read for his user to help specially disabled people yes his invention was creative specially
for those people and solved many problems as Y. Borodin says
“Borodin’s software, Capti Narrator, serves as a hub for spoken material drawn from many written sources:
Dropbox, Google Drive, Web pages, e-book repositories such as Bookshare and Gutenberg, and more”
 Customer focus: of course Y. Borodin ideas was coming up from the root of the people need
and his invention came to solve many problems for humans with disability specially blind
people
“He is making it easier for people who are blind—and everyone else, too—to listen to content published
only as text online.”

6. LARS BLACKMORE:
 Creative: his idea was a complete insane and was not imagined before but his invention created a
new horizon for aerospace industry and his idea would change the space travelconcept in the
future as L. Blackmore says
“Blackmore has devised algorithms to enable a rocket’s onboard computer to deal with this chaotic
situation while safely controlling the craft’s fall.”
 Visionary: When L. Blackmore came up with his idea to enable the rocket not only to fly to land
as well he was imagining the future and imagining how the idea would help to make space
traveling more efficient if his idea worked actually his idea people dreamt about it as L.
Blackmore says
“I’d heard that Elon [Musk] had these dreams of making reusable rockets,” Blackmore says. “And since I
was working on precision landing for Mars, I thought I would be the right guy to do that.”
 Risk taker: L. Blackmore‘s idea was un imaginable because it was risky and could cost people
lives and money thinking of the idea itself was insane at that time.
Landing a rocket backwards is an insane trick. The descent is extraordinarily unpredictable, and rockets
aren’t meant to travel in reverse.
 Innovators are not traditional “maverick”: because his idea was hard to implement and
has not been implemented before it was not traditional idea it, actually he thought
completely out of the box and against the norm as L. BLACKMORE says
“As things stand, every time a space rocket takes off and releases its payload, it breaks up and falls into the
ocean. “It’s basically like flying a 747 across the country and then, instead of refueling it, throwing it
away,” says Blackmore, a soft-spoken Brit who leads a team at SpaceX that’s developing the onboard
software necessary for a rocket to come down gently in an upright position onto a platformin the ocean.”
DENA MARRINUCCI
 Visionary: she knew that her idea was very hard and would face many problems but she
looked at the result and how many lives it would save in the future
On average, a sample that size has 50 billion red blood cells, 50 million white blood cells, and only a few
circulating tumor cells. “You’re basically looking for needles in a haystack,” says Marrinucci
 Creative: Dena’s Idea was complete and did what others did not that what made her
invention creative because her invention detect all of the damaged cells on the contrary to
the other methods of detecting cancer tumor as D. Marrinucci says
Other technologies miss some circulating tumor cells because they are scanning for only one biological
marker or are filtering cells by size. Epic says it finds more because it detects not only genomic
abnormalities but also other biological markers, such as protein expression in cells. That should be useful in
tracking the progress of a patient’s cancer over time, so that treatments can be adjusted as the disease
evolves. Twenty-six pharmaceutical companies are using Epic’s technology in clinical trials of cancer
drugs.

7.  Customer’s oriented: her invention inspired by her grandmother death cancer when the
doctors discovered the tumor in his advanced levels she felt that she could do something
about it that what encourages her to innovate
Marrinucci had just begun graduate school at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego in 2004 when her
grandmother was diagnosed with advanced melanoma. Less than a year earlier, however, doctors had given
her grandmother an all-clear after a PET scan. “By the time you see cancer cells on a PET or CT scan, there
are thousands of them,” she says. “And that’s what we’re trying to change.”
JEANNETTE GARCIA
 Creative: her discovery was outstanding and unusual because her discovery is promising
and in the future will solve the world big problem with recycled waste
It turned out that the plastic was not only much stronger than what she had originally been trying to make
but entirely recyclable. Those properties made it a promising gateway to desirable new materials.
 Believed in her ability and others ability: she believed that her discovery would make a difference in
the future and if people think differently they will make a huge difference in their lives
The thermoset plastic that Garcia made, on the other hand, completely reverted to its base compound, or
monomer, when soaked in acid. “As chemists,” she says, “if we understand what we’re doing well enough,
then we can actually go in and undo it too, in just as efficient a way as we built it.”
 Persuasive: J. Garcia never pushed her discovery to people before it becomes ready and
complete useful which means she is still working on it to make it usable and ready to
people to benefit from it
There’s still work to do before they are ready for commercial applications. But now that we know
recyclable thermosets are possible, Garcia says, we can think of how they might replace materials we’ve
been using for decades.
All of seven innovators above who I chose have different traits and worked in different industries
and different fields but I think they have something in common that if we have it as human being
we could invent and contribute to the revolutionary race; after the analysis above which were
taken from their stories and Autobiographies I would agree that all of them were CREATIVE
they created something was not expected, additionally they were CUSTOMER ORIENTED so
their inventions was the result of human kind needs and wants they worked so hard to make
peoples’ lives better and solve the humanity major problems, the last but not the least they were
INITIATIVE, they worked hard ,thought and was trying to come up with new ideas and
solutions before anybody else.
The type of Inventions that the previous innovators had:
I will start with general definitions of the incremental, radical and disruptive innovations and
then will choose 4 of the innovators to drop down these definitions on their inventions to
categorize them accordingly

8.  Incremental innovation: concerns an existing product, service, process, organization or
method whose performance has been significantly enhanced or upgraded.
 A radical innovation is one that has a significant impact on a market and on the economic
activity of firms in that market
 A disruptive innovation helps create a new market and value network, and eventually
disrupts an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing
an earlier technology. Disruptive innovation creates substantial growth by offering a new
performance trajectory – “a game changer” - that, even if initially inferior to the
performance of existing technologies, has the potential to become markedly superior.
 DENA MARRINUCCI: Her startup bets it can track cancer from an early stage, without any
biopsies.
Her invention is RADICAL because finding the damaged cells was seemed impossible for
the technology where a sample that size has 50 billion red blood cells, 50 million white blood
cells, and only a few circulating tumor cells. “You’re basically looking for needles in a
haystack but D. Marrinucci invention did that what made her innovator,
 LARS BLACKMORE: Would space travel flourish if we could reuse the rockets?
his invention was RADICAL because his idea was insane and it seemed also impossible to
implement the risk was high and even his invention could be considered as DISRUPTIVE
because now one had this need to land with the rocket actually it meant to fly ahead to to
land being reusable and Landing a rocket backwards is an insane trick. The descent is
extraordinarily unpredictable, and rockets aren’t meant to travel in reverse.
 RICHARD LUNT: Making invisible solar cells for electronic devices requires some
exceptional creativity.
His invention is RADICAL because making invisible solar cells made a huge impact on the
energy industry it changed the way phone makers and even building structuring looks at the
power source not as problem anymore with this sustainable source of power and opened new
horizons for people and could save the plant a lot of waste and green gas Emissions I would
Imagine a world where every window-laden skyscraper generates its own solar power, where
the skylights in your ceiling are a source of light and electricity, and where your iPhone
charges itself through the power of the sun”
 JEANNETTE GARCIA: A chance discovery sparked a quest for plastics that are both strong
and recyclable.
Her discovery was RADICAL because it will has a huge impact on the plastic industry and
would save a lot of waste and would solve one of the world’s most harmful products and
damaging the environment and her discovery could be considered as disruptive because there
was no customer’s need for recyclable plastic but there was environmental need to our plant

9. References:
 Zimmermann, E. (2015) her startup bets it can track cancer from an early stage, without
any biopsies.[online] available from: http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-
under-35/2015/entrepreneur/dena-marrinucci/
 Talbot, D. (2015) Making invisible solar cells for electronic devices requires some
exceptional creativity. [online], available from:
http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2015/inventor/richard-lunt/
 Knight, W. (2015) Would space travel flourish if we could reuse the rockets?. [online]
available from: http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-
35/2015/visionary/lars-blackmore/
 D. Hof, R. (2015) He and his brother started Stripe to make money flow easily
online.[online] available from: http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-
35/2015/entrepreneur/patrick-collison/
 Jacobs, S. (2015) A chance discovery sparked a quest for plastics that are both strong
and recyclable. [online] available from:
http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2015/pioneer/jeannette-
garcia/
 Jacob, S. (2015) A software engineer makes a habit of going after everyday problems.
[online] available from: http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-
35/2015/inventor/lisa-seacat-deluca/
 Talbot, D. (2015) A software tool conceived for blind people could offer an intuitive way
for anyone to listen to online material. [online] available from:
http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2015/humanitarian/yevgen-
borodin/
 O. Bagley, R. (2015) the 10 Traits of Great Innovators. [online] available from:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccabagley/2014/01/15/the-10-traits-of-great-innovators/
 Zenger, J. Folkman, J. (2015) Research: 10 Traits of Innovative Leaders. [online]
available from: https://hbr.org/2014/12/research-10-traits-of-innovative-leaders.