because technology needs risk takers

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I recently sat down with David to discuss his views on leadership, the biggest tech trends reshaping the world, and career advice for budding future innovators and change makers.

1. Build Skills: Find something you like and excel at it

Innovation often requires significant resources, such as time, money and talent. Some individuals and organizations may lack the resources to invest in innovation, while others may be unwilling to allocate resources outside of other priorities.

To be a great innovator, David said you first have to find something you’re good at. Innovation is about this ongoing search to find ways to improve, to make things better, he explained. Whether we’re running an organization or doing R&D, it’s this continual pursuit of improvement and being willing to step outside the dots to find a solution.

But what most people need to understand is that creating innovation can be very difficult. David added that the results will take some time to bear fruit. According to McKinsey, innovation requires discipline as much as it requires creativity. Innovation takes work and sustained effort in an area of ​​interest. But David said it’s that focus that should be based on your key strengths and passions, that will help propel you forward.

There is something I would like to say to every student or anyone you know, say their career, find out what you like and be really good at it. I know that sounds a little simplistic, but we all need something that, you know, we specialize in,” David said. And don’t try to be too broad too fast, you see, because you build all these other skills around analyzing how to approach problems, how to come up with solutions and stuff like that.

So the first steps are to find out what you like and invest in being good at it. And then you’re ready to take a leap of faith.

2. Take risks: Innovation requires taking something to the next level

David also talked about the importance of being agile as your interests and passions can shift and shift over time as you learn more about the specific issue or problems you are working on.

Because as you start down that road, new things will cross your path. And I think it’s really important that you stay open to new ideas, she said. There’s this constant kind of relearning or being open to maybe changing along the way, but you have a foundation of what you’re good at or what you like, so stay open and be willing to course correct.

So knowing when to take risks is another essential skill you can hone to become a good innovator. I see a lot of wonderful people who are bright, articulate, deep domain savvy, but stay too far in their comfort zone, David explained.

Culture can play a role here. David alluded to the perception that others in the developing world view Australians as fearful of risk. But he disagreed: a lot of people think Australians are, you know, risk averse. But we are quite rational. Take miners, for example; it’s pretty risky, right? You know, spending three years looking for lithium in waste and spending tens of millions of dollars doing it, but they believe there was something.

So we are not necessarily risk averse; we didn’t apply it to some new areas like technology or software development or even medicine. So we have to take that adventurous spirit and apply it to new areas.”

3. Passion and Purpose: The key to unlocking the energy to innovate

Finding motivation, passion and energy in our work is essential to be a good innovator. The last piece of advice David mentioned was that if you’re doing something and you don’t like it, just don’t do it. Go where you get natural energy, he said.

Energy (which you can obtain by combining passion and purpose) is an essential component of the creation process because it provides the drive and motivation needed to overcome the many challenges and obstacles you may encounter when experimenting with innovative ideas and solutions to many challenging problems of life.

Great innovators have faced incredible odds and they’ve tried things sometimes the same thing 100 times, and then the 101st time, well, they’ve come up with something different, and there’s a twist, David said.

Importantly, it would not be just one of these technologies or new innovations that would profoundly change the world for the better. Rather, it will be the joint efforts of all innovators pushing forward now and in the future that will enable positive change that could very well alter the course of human history.

I think it’s all of these technologies working together to enable a completely different way of doing things that’s really what motivates me tremendously, he said. So I think it’s really important that as you go through it, be willing to go out and give it a try; it could be starting your own business, it could be raising capital, it could just be doing something different within your area of ​​expertise.

So it’s not just because you’re brilliant; it’s actually hard work along the way that can really allow you to be successful. If you follow some of these principles, and then [with] a little luck along the way… recognize your luck and go for it, i think the world is an amazing opportunity for all of us.

And finally: be bold, be strong, go for it would be my point of view.

Professor Mary-Anne Williams is the Michael J Crouch Chair for Innovation at UNSW and Deputy Director, UNSW AI Institute.

This piece originally appeared in UNSW’s BusinessThink published on April 12, 2023

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