reward.jpgI started think­ing to one good point for dis­cus­sion that sounds like “which is the best reward for an inno­va­tor?” Does it arrive at the end of a good job? In order to find the proper answer let’s try to define a good inno­va­tor pro­file, under­stand him and then pay the bill. How to rec­og­nize it? Due to the extreme odd­ity of his job, we can’t made dis­tinc­tions based on gen­der, age or race, num­ber and shape of eyes and fin­gers. You could be tall or blond or bald too, we’re search­ing for your mind-​set. Maybe an inno­va­tor needs to be curi­ous enough, won­der on every­thing he can­not imme­di­ately explain to him­self; then he needs to be young (as an atti­tude, of course) that it means to be opened to all of the news and merge them together in his brain, as a young appren­tice does (he needs to be an appren­tice, as an atti­tude we said). He needs to be a good com­mu­ni­ca­tor, and this is hard to obtain if you’re not famil­iar with this job. Com­mu­ni­cate inno­v­a­tive ideas could be made in sev­eral ways; the main point to remem­ber is that peo­ple who are lis­ten­ing to you prob­a­bly are not inno­va­tors, so if they scratch their heads more than three times in a minute (and you’re not in front of a bunch of mon­keys), it means that you have to change your approach. It’s enough? No, the pre­vi­ous could apply to a good sales­man or a doc­tor or a foot­ball trainer too. But the innovator’s pro­file is typ­i­fied by one pecu­liar­ity, always the same one, the curse of the inno­va­tor: he can’t lie about his job (and don’t ask me why). Let’s stop our research now, there are mil­lions of qual­ity I for­get, I know, but I’ll leave you the plea­sure to find.

If we talk about “salary” we set up a sce­nario where our inno­va­tor is an employee, and where the rules for pay­ment dif­fer from com­pany to com­pany, based on inter­nal pol­icy, lev­els and rel­e­vance. It depends on mar­ket con­di­tions, on your skill and on your influ­ence to be able to raise your salary, and that’s the same if you act as an inno­va­tor or not.
No, the reward or the com­pen­sa­tion we’re argu­ing about is some­thing dif­fer­ent, it could cor­re­spond to bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, or bet­ter work­ing instru­ments that the inno­va­tor needs to have in order to do his job at a good level, but prob­a­bly in the end the reward is that per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion he receives from doing his job. His mind needs to be feed with sug­ges­tions and, depend­ing on the field of appli­ca­tion, he needs all the instru­ments to improve his inno­v­a­tive mind. He needs to travel, explore, test, play, and meet with other peo­ple and other ideas. And all of these only to reach the zenith, that is con­cen­trated into the per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion spring­ing out when you see peo­ple singing your orig­i­nal jin­gle or using your brand new air-​freshener. It’s enough?

Why do I blog this?
A lot of words to say that doing inno­va­tion is a won­der­ful job, you don’t have to be paid for it and suc­cess­ful inno­va­tors are so proud of their ideas that they don’t need more than our appre­ci­a­tion. (Two ways: I’m going to rewrite it or I’m going to find another job).

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