In December 2021, Dr. Kati Karikó rolled up her sleeve to receive a COVID vaccine that she had spent forty years helping to make possible. Standing in that hospital, watching doctors and nurses follow her lead, she wept. What most people missed in that moment was how many times the world had told her to stop. She was moved from lab to lab. Her funding was cut. Her ideas were dismissed as unconventional. She sacrificed financial security, status, and the comfort of working within accepted scientific boundaries because she could see something others could not yet see.
Dr. Karikó developed a practice of relentless curiosity, held her belief longer than most people would have dared, and surrounded herself with a small group of peers who kept each other going through the years when almost no one else believed. The result changed the course of human history.
Most leaders will face different stakes, but the traits that drove Dr. Karikó are the same ones that separate leaders who build something lasting from those who manage what already exists. Innovation is a practice, and like every practice in this series, it can be developed deliberately by anyone willing to commit to it.
What Disruptive Innovators Actually Do
When I studied the leaders who have genuinely disrupted their fields, five traits surfaced consistently. They are enthusiastic problem hunters who stay curious long after others have moved on. They are obsessive about finding solutions rather than defending existing ones. They persist through resistance without needing the path to be clear. They stand up for what they believe even when the room disagrees. And they are prepared to make real sacrifices in service of the idea.
These are developed capacities, and the leaders I work with who cultivate them do so through small, repeatable choices made day after day.
Three Practices to Build Your Innovation Capacity
Tool One: Develop Your Theory of the Future
Innovation scholar Clayton Christensen argued that every leader who wants to disrupt meaningfully must begin with a clear theory of where their industry is heading. Without that orienting vision, innovation efforts become reactive and scattered. The discipline is to regularly ask yourself what the future of your field looks like in five or ten years and then work backward from that picture to identify what capabilities, products, or approaches will be required to thrive in it. Leaders who hold this future-facing question consistently notice problems worth solving that others have overlooked entirely. Christensen called this the first and most important move a disruptive leader can make, and the evidence across industries bears it out. Block thirty minutes this week to write your honest answer to this question: what does the future of my industry look like, and what will it demand of us that we are still building toward?
Ask yourself: What is my current theory of the future, and am I actively leading toward it?
Tool Two: Approach Problems with a Beginner's Mind
Carol Dweck's decades of research on growth mindset demonstrates that the leaders most capable of sustained innovation are those who remain genuinely open to being wrong and genuinely curious about what they have yet to learn. The trap for experienced leaders is that expertise, the very thing that earned them their role, can quietly close off the fresh perspectives that innovation requires. A beginner's mind means holding experience lightly enough that new information can still surprise you. The most practical way to cultivate this is to regularly put yourself in situations where you are the learner rather than the expert. Visit an organization outside your industry. Invite someone with a completely different background into your next problem-solving session. Ask the questions a newcomer would ask and give the room time to think before you offer your own answer.
Ask yourself: Where am I letting expertise close off curiosity, and what would a beginner ask about this problem right now?
Tool Three: Coach Innovation into Your Team
Sir John Whitmore, one of the pioneers of modern coaching practice, defined coaching as unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. That definition applies directly to how leaders build innovative cultures. Teams that innovate consistently are teams where leaders ask more questions than they answer, where mistakes are treated as learning events, and where people feel genuinely safe to try something that might unfold differently than planned. The leader's job is to create the conditions where innovation can emerge. In your next team meeting, replace being directive with a question. Ask your team what problem in your organization they would most want to solve if they had the freedom and resources to pursue it. Then listen carefully to what surfaces, because that conversation is often where the next meaningful disruption begins.
Ask yourself: Am I creating the conditions where my team feels genuinely free to bring their most original thinking to the work?
What Innovation Actually Produces
Leaders who develop an innovation practice build teams that are more engaged, more resilient, and more capable of adapting when the environment shifts without warning. They create cultures where problems are treated as opportunities. And they model for everyone around them that curiosity is a leadership strength, and that the willingness to stay with an idea through difficulty is what eventually brings it to life.
Dr. Karikó's mentor once said that her genius was a willingness to accept failure and keep trying, and an ability to answer questions people were smart enough to ask but afraid to pursue. That is the innovation practice in its purest form. Staying curious. Staying committed. And trusting that the work will eventually find its moment.
What problem are you currently walking past every day that deserves a closer look?