This is one of the most intelligent things I have read on this site in a while. Thank you for your input.

Stereotyping makes innovators somewhat harder to see. Game changers are not predominantly contest participants, crazy resume writers, contrarians, shock jocks, or blow it up proponents. The best of them are thoughtful contributors, who apply their special talent to help build enterprise value and enterprise health.

Innovators (game changers) think and act differently because it is naturally comfortable for them to do so. That?s their make up. They routinely consider alternative assumptions, initiatives and outcomes that may lead to new and useful perspectives. Most game changers thrive on a broad range of inputs from lots of sources and use various combinations of abstract, conceptual and analytical thinking to create novel possibilities for further consideration.

Game changers are far more inclined to create new and better systems, products, etc. than they are to incrementally improve the existing ones. They are generally self-confident; most have a track record of ?developing solutions? that reaches back into their childhood. They experiment. The best fail early and often. As Thomas Edison said, ?To have a great idea, have a lot of them.?

Because prescreening for game changers will eliminate about 85% of the applicant pool (including a proportionate number of likely top performers), here is an alternative approach to effectively harnessing the power of innovators:

? Pick the best person for every job opening ? i.e. job match to a well developed job analysis for each position, every time. Use total person assessments that include cognitive, behavior and interest measures. Know the corresponding qualities of top performers in the position of interest.

? Among all employees (not just new hires), find the roughly one in seven who are particularly innovation-prone. Proper assessment will not only identify them, but will also provide actionable information to improve communication, collaboration and development among all employees.

? Senior management should make sure that the company deploys and supports its likely game changers in ways that stand to maximize their value to the enterprise. Let innovation-prone employees lead teams. See that they get plenty of job-related stimuli. Evaluate reporting relationships to avoid mismatches ? i.e. innovation-prone employees perform at their best when they report to innovation-prone superiors. The right training (e.g. Lateral Thinking techniques) can elevate anybody?s creativity; innovation-prone employees tend to pick up on these techniques much more quickly than others.

? How the organization manages talent and knowledge matters a whole lot more than a ?pajama day? or a ?martini blowout?, when it comes to developing a pro-innovator brand. Encouraging experimentation and celebrating early failures (learning experiences) matters, too. Authenticity counts. Signature experiences (often told stories and displayed pictures that highlight successful innovation and those who drive it) serve to continuously underscore a company?s depth of commitment. High levels of employee engagement reinforce every aspect of attracting and retaining top talent, including game changers.

Most employers have more innovators and game changers than they realize. Find out who they are and then start making the right moves to better employ their talents.

Please email if you want to know more about available tools and techniques for measuring and managing talent, including those tools specifically tailored for the innovation agenda.

Google, and others using some form of objective candidate evaluation have conducted analysis to document the relationships between candidate response patterns and job performance. It can be quite revealing. Case in point, we recently documented two cases where an experience based question used for screening had a negative relationship to performance. It was counter intuitive, yet the organizations had been using the questions. More experience in what seems to be a job relevant background can actually be a detriment.

Solution: Don’t assume ? collect data, analyze, revise as appropriate.