Article originally by Axel Schultze via LinkedIn

What we found when researching what the best innovation teams and best startup teams had in common, may surprise you.

Their education, their business experience, and everything that was usually analyzed played just a minor role - even age. The magic is created with the right cognitive abilities.

Those eight C-Abilities are exclusive, meaning if one ability is missing, it puts the success of an entire innovation team at risk. AND they are also inclusive. Meaning it does not matter what education a person has, what background they are from, or what society, country, or ethnic group they are coming from.

C-Abilities or Cognitive Abilities are often more critical to success than the conventional skills most people can learn over time. The 8-C abilities for Innovation Teams consist of:

Curious: Curiosity is a key for every innovator, researcher, creative mind, or similar engagements. It’s the first in the list of C-Abilities we suggest exploring with innovation team candidates. An innovation team member needs to be deeply interested in every aspect of what the current situation is that needs innovation. They need to know as much as possible about how their customers have a need or dream for different solutions or what may be painful for users without even recognizing it. Curious people try to dive deep – yet they may be lightyears away from being an expert in the field. Interestingly enough, being an expert in the field is usually one of the biggest disadvantages because it reduces curiosity and openness.

Courageous: A new solution, in particular, a breakthrough, needs extreme courage to make decisions against all odds and courage to stand their ground. An innovation team in large organizations will quickly learn that the executives that need to give approval will most likely reject the concept. Not because they are too conservative, too closed-minded, or just don’t get it – they have just not yet been convinced. It takes courage to oppose an opinion from an executive and to continue it takes extreme communication skills, confidence, and creativity. During the innovation project, the innovation team will constantly make major decisions. Deciding who to call if they need rare knowledge, what to drop and with what to continue in ideation processes, It’s often easier to reject an idea than investigating time to understand it. Fighting for an idea takes intelligence communication talent and courage.

Clairvoyant: Clairvoyant is a rarely used term but a great way to explain an ability that has no other word. With clairvoyance, we mean that far-sighted instinct with fast decision-making ability to see a new opportunity. An interesting business opportunity, an interesting opportunity to use technology in a completely different way of seeing potential in an idea, a person, a solution, that can only somebody see who can envision where it can be taken. Clairvoyance is the ability to be visionary but also the ability to construct the future around that ability. If innovation team members lack such an ability, it may tier down the motivation of the entire team as it takes a lot of communication talent, collaboration talent, creativity, and continuity to work on such visionary ideas and concepts until everybody in the team can “see” it as well. The higher the clairvoyance level of all team members is, the faster is the inter-team communication. We consider Clairvoyance the C-Ability that needs unique attention because this ability is the least researched.

Confident: Team members need to be confident in everything they say or do and open enough to share thoughts that are just far from being substantiated. Confidence shows best when one is confident enough that he or she is completely unclear about their idea. On the other hand, confidence is important when explaining a construct or solution that has never been built before but all data and tests indicate that it will work and if not the team will be able to make it work. Every team member needs to be confident about at least the part they contributed in the innovation. Lack of confidence is a sign of not being sure because there are too many factors that have never been considered. Then consider them instead of trying to be artificially confident. Whoever will see or hear about the innovation – no matter in what state – will always be very cautious anyway. And confident people will know they can’t promise or guarantee anything and they will say so.

To learn more about the remaining abilities, click on “Continue Reading.”

8 Cognitive Abilities The Best Teams Possess