Myers-Briggs® Test and Innovation

“Image courtesy of Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”

Creativity is what stimulates growth in business and in the everyday world. By understanding how your Myers-Briggs® test personality type approaches creativity and innovation, you can harness your skills and provide more inventive ideas or solutions in your life.

Here, we will align innovation with the concept of creativity (thinking of new ideas) and the actual “implementation of ideas.” (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP) Through understanding the strengths in innovation for the different MBTI® test types, you can construct groups of people who will work best together on creating new ideas, or individually seek out creative partners that complement or challenge your innovative ways—all in all leading to more efficient and constant innovation. (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP)

For the next sixteen weeks, you may further your understanding of your Myers-Briggs test personality type through learning about the Ideascape™ and Typescape™ models—which interlace the development and implementation of ideas with type—and the concept of innovation attitudes. You’ll further dive into your personality type’s use of innovation with the Innovation Process model, and finishing with the Innovationscape™ model, which ties all of this information together. (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP)

The second and fourth letters of your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® personality type describe your approach to innovation, or your innovation attitude. (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP) Therefore, your approach to problems, your preference for certain types of ideas, and your behavior during the innovative process are all composed of the parts of your personality that are either Sensing (S) and Intuition (N) or Judging (J) and Perceiving (P). Sensing and Intuition describe your internal process of innovation, while Judging and Perceiving describe how you innovate in conjunction with the outside world. (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP)

Your innovation attitude starts with an idea, which can be categorized in the four realms of the Ideascape™: Efficieny ideas, Refining ideas, Adopting ideas, and Different ideas. (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP) The Ideascape™ allows you to see which areas of innovation are most easily created in your organization or atmosphere, and which areas need some work. The four realms of ideas involve:

• Efficiency ideas: how to do something in a more resourceful, timely and financially sound way
• Refining ideas: how to better something that is already being done. These ideas often lead to changes in the process of something, but not in its end result
• Adopting ideas: how to change something in your organization in a way that has been proven to work elsewhere
• Different ideas: how a completely new idea can benefit an organization; usually something that has never been used before

The Typescape™ combines the Ideascape™ and your Myers-Briggs personality test type, displaying where your type lies in the four categories of the Ideascape—uncovering which area of innovation your type prefers. . (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP) After learning this information, it could benefit you to focus most of your energies on the sort of ideas that your personality type works best with. Because each type may approach innovation differently, knowing the type of yourself and those in your team can greatly aid your innovation process.

Then you’ll learn about the Innovation Process, which further differs with each Myers Briggs type, whether your type prefers the Define phase (what is the problem), the Discover phase (what ideas can we think of that would help solve this problem), the Decide phase (which specific methods are we going to use to solve this problem), or the Delivery phase (how do we make these ideas happen). Combining the Innovation Process with the Ideascape™ creates the Innovationscape™ model, which thoroughly explains how your type approaches and prefers innovation. (Killen and Williams, 2009, CPP)

Furthermore, each MBTI test type is broken down into the type’s most common contributions to innovation, precedence in innovation, difficulties that may arise, examples of possible innovation limitations, and examples of what that type needs from others when working together in innovation, as well as tips for getting the most out of the type’s innovation strengths and weaknesses.

Formulate a career path that you’ll enjoy for years to come with the help of the Strong Interest Inventory test below:

Want to learn about your personality, but don’t want to go through the process of having an interpreter evaluate your results? Find out your personality type and immediately download your report upon completion with the MBTI test below:

References

Introduction to Type and Innovation. (Damien Killen & Gareth Williams, 2009, CPP Inc.)

Click On Your Personality Type & Read About Innovation Styles: