3 Toxic Qualities of Candidates that Stop Innovation

Most everyone in the tech industry is after the biggest buzz word of our time: “Innovation.”

Companies invest a lot of time, money and resources in searching for “innovations” to break the mold of their industry and change the status quo.

Technological advancements are resulting in more competition as industries are colliding.

“Take the New York Times, for example,” says Scott D. Anthony, author of The Innovator’s Guide to Growth. “Who does the NYT compete with? It used to be just other newspapers, but today, they compete with just about everyone.”

It takes smart, driven and bold people to come up with new, ground-breaking business and technological ideas. Companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and IBM are among the most often cited as the most innovative enterprises today in the US.

But these notable companies’ innovative progress couldn’t have happened without its people driving the force of change.

How do you find the best, most innovative people to join your team? We talked to experts and researched examples from companies with a proven record of making waves in their industries.

It takes smart, driven and bold people to come up with new, ground-breaking business and technological ideas.

Here are three top qualities to spot in candidates that top innovation in its tracks.

1. Anti-Collaboration

A lot of times, the smartest professionals with the brightest ideas prefer to work independently.

Innovative ideas are great, but meaningless unless a team can get together and execute on them. Having a habit of constantly trying to do everything on your own doesn’t make for a good, scalable strategy.

If, for instance, you’re out of commission or on a vacation for a while, the whole operation would come to a grinding halt.

And, hey, don’t take it from us.

The VP of Innovation at IBM (which was named the #1 most innovative company in 2015 by 24/7 Wall St.) Bernie Meyerson would agree. He said that collaboration, including knowledge and skill-sharing, is important “for many more reasons than just getting the answer,” according to Silicon Angle.

He said that tech advancements are usually a result of group efforts. “If you do something that blows the world away, there’s enough credit to last for everyone. I’ve seen siloe’d organizations where they see it as competitive and it’s not, it’s a team sport,” he said.

Google also says that sharing everything is a pillar of its innovation. “We try to facilitate this by working in small, crowded teams in open cube arrangements, rather than individual offices,” according to Google.

"If you do something that blows the world away, there’s enough credit to last for everyone."

2. Deep-Seated Fear of Failure and Admitting Mistakes

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations,” the late, legendary Steve Jobs said in his book I, Steve.

This was definitely true for Steve Jobs who launched numerous product failures.

The Apple Lisa, Macintosh TV and the Apple III to name a few (hat tip: Harvard Business Review).

But this willingness to fail and keep pushing forward, despite the lows that come with failure, contributed to Jobs’ success, according to the quote above. So, truly innovative candidates should be able to swallow their pride and talk about mistakes they’ve made and learned from.

Google puts it best when the company said: “The thing is, people remember your hits more than your misses,” citing its failure of Google Video Player, but success of YouTube. For every billion dollar business idea with which Google succeeded, there have been a handful of failures.

Risk aversion makes no room for innovation.

3. Inability to Communicate Creative Problem Solving Techniques

Corey Katouli of Demonstranda finds that presenting a real-world problem to a candidate is a great test of true innovation, and then gauge their thought-process.

“Since we spend much of our time thinking about solving our problems, we know what works and what doesn’t,” Katouli says. “We also know what is novel and what is your typical run-of-the-mill approach and does not result in innovation.”

Asking a candidate to solve a current problem is a lot more predictive of strong skill and talent rather than just their past experience, he adds.