From Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, Alan Mathison Turing, Steve Jobs, Sahil Lavingia, to Patrick Collison, there are common traits or behaviors shared among these great personalities. I called them the traits of innovators. Regardless of the scale of their impact, undoubtedly they are innovators in their era. Their works have made the world a better place.

To cultivate the innovator's spirit within us, it's interesting to look at and learn from those giants’ life. You might carry the same behaviors, the traits of an innovator in you.

As we know an innovation doesn’t have to be a big invention. Instead, making 1% progress of improvement in a particular process of product is already a sign of an innovator.

Let's dive in. Hopefully, this list inspires you to become more innovative and keep honing your innovative spirit. Let's learn together, these are the traits of an Innovator:

Problem Solver

Solving a problem is a fulfillment for them. When they saw a problem, they saw an opportunity. The problems that they’ve solved define who they are now. When you read their biography, the highlight will be what were the problems that they’ve successfully tackled and overcome.

Innovation, at its core, is about solving problems. Each problem has its scale. We can always start with the small ones. Start to solve things that are problems to you first, then learn from it. Find the meaningful one.

When Sahil Lavingia, couldn’t find any good platform for indie creators to directly and easily sell their products to their audience, he was eager to solve that problem, so he built Gumroad. Now Gumroad has grown from $4M in annual revenue to $22M in revenue, and from Break Even to making $10M in profit a year (source).

— Innovators are remembered for the problems they solved.

“Someone's favorite book has yet to be written. Someone's favorite painting has yet to be painted. Someone's favorite movie has yet to be made. It could be yours.”
– Sahil Lavingia

Productive

Yes, you might have some time to play around, but innovators constantly look for opportunities. They are always ready to work when ideas come. 1% success is enough for them. From 10 projects that they work on, maybe only one project will work.

Innovators constantly trying to realize one idea to another. They keep the momentum moving. They do not stay passive and wait to be assigned to the project.

Jordi Bruin, founder of Good Snooze, constantly works on his latest app ideas. From helping people to have good posture, to helping allergic people buy their groceries. From one project to another, he used to do rapid prototyping and quick market tests. He could move to a new project in a matter of days or weeks. (While some of us might wait for inspiration for months or years to work on something).

Over the last two years as an indie dev I've released more than 20 different apps and projects. More than 10 have been featured by Apple on the App Store because they solve problems in simple and innovative ways.
— Jordi Bruin

There are many reasons to keep productive. As innovators, find any aspect in your organization or company, or in your business, that you think could’ve been better. Pick that work on ideas, and solve it. Set your desk or laptop on fire. Go get to work!

Curious

This one could be the obvious one among other traits, but often overlooked. Albert Einstein once said that he had no special talent but was rather passionately curious.

Innovators are constantly curious about how to make something better. How to improve the current process. Is there any different approach should we try? Why does this thing happen?

Steve Jobs is great at this. In fact, curiosity is Steve Jobs’ greatest strength. As inc.com writes on their website: This Well-Known Steve Jobs Trait Is What Separates Successful People From Everyone Else.

Jony Ive once said about Steve:

He was without doubt the most inquisitive human I have ever met. His curiosity was practiced with intention and rigor.

Popular quotes by Steve Jobs about curiosity:

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."
"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

By following and practicing your curiosity, you will question the unknown, and learn new things, and that is where unpopular and creative ideas hide.

Speaking about creativity, let us move on to the next trait of innovator…

Open Minded

Literally, their mind is open. The mind is willing to gain new information in order to solve their problem. Willing to explore new ways and new approaches. Then they connect all that information in their mind.

Jony Ive, the former Chief Design Officer at Apple, is a great example of an innovator who showed open-mindedness. In an interview, he mentioned that Steve Jobs was the most inquisitive human he had ever met and that his curiosity was practiced with intention and rigor. This demonstrates how open-mindedness played a crucial role in Steve Jobs' approach to innovation.

The key to innovation is being open-minded. Being open-minded means being receptive to different ideas, cultures, perspectives, forms of expression, and styles. It also means recognizing that our own viewpoint may not always be correct.

They are open to changes.

Creative

Innovators are creative. The word "creative" is rooted in the Latin word “creo” which means “to make or create something”, meaning the innovators are passionate about creating something new.

Their mindset is to create for themselves first. Then suddenly their creation is being by most people. They create not to impress others, but often it is just about fulfilling their curiosity, ambition, or solving their own problem.

They always challenge the “status quo”. They are quickly bored with the old solutions.

The innovators are often not wasting too much time in thinking about the ideas in their head, they jump right in to create, to make it real. Sometimes they seem rushing because before the idea is gone, they need to put it to work.

Classic example, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is known for his relentless pursuit of creating things that push the boundaries of technology and reshape industries. He co-founded Zip2, an online payment company that eventually became PayPal, revolutionizing online payments. Musk then founded SpaceX with the goal of making space travel more accessible and affordable. He also founded Tesla Motors to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Musk's story is a testament to a person who keeps creating and making ideas come to life.

When we talk about creativity, one essential skill to have is the “skill of connecting the dots”. I dedicate that topic to a separate article.

Optimist

When you pessimist, you tend to stop, you want to quit. Innovators, the optimists, keep improving and creating something to make it better.

When they see a problem, they’re optimistic and believe that the problem could be solved. They don’t quit and easily give up when find problems. They see the world with optimism. They believe the future is going to be better if they do something. They always want to improve, and make better products or processes. When things don’t work, it triggers them to think another way around.

Steve Jobs once said:

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Bill Gates always wants to make the world a better place, he invests and funds lots of dollars for innovators around the globe, in such a wide range of projects, that tackle world's big problems. His foundation commits hundreds of dollars to develop the Malaria vaccine. I bet he won’t do all of these if he pessimist about the future.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, are optimistic that we can eradicate all human diseases by 2100, so they built an organization to utilize Artificial Intelligence to study human cells.

— The optimist keeps trying and innovates, while pessimist critics then quit.

What makes them become such risk-takers? Because they’re an optimist.

Back to you...

Those are the top six traits and characteristics of an innovator that I learned. I believe there are more interesting characteristics you’ll find in these awesome types of people.

They are problem solver, always productive, exploring with curiosity, open-minded people, always creating something, and seeing the world with optimism.

Hope you enjoy the article. If you spot these behaviors in anybody you know, tell them that they are an innovator.

Much love to all innovators around the world, your works make the world a better place.