Are You An Innovator Or An Entrepreneur?

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In common parlance, innovators and entrepreneurs are often confused. Both create something new in the world of business. And both tend to focus obsessively on results. But there is a fundamental difference in the way they view the marketplace. The entrepreneur concerns himself primarily with existing markets, customers, and conditions: he identifies a need and fills it, although the need itself has been established by somebody else. It's the innovator who anticipates and creates a need before trying to fill it. The entrepreneur is a market filler. The innovator -- like Fred Smith of Federal Express Corp. -- is the market builder.

Here are 10 quick tests for the innovative personality.

1. Innovators are always looking under rocks for opportunity -- in problems, in trends, in feedback from customers.

2. Innovators are strategists. They continually redefine their goals, and have flexible plans to reach them.

3. Innovators unhook their prejudices by constantly striving to rid their thinking of preconceived beliefs, biases, and unchallenged assumptions.

4. Innovators are trend spotters. They make it their business to monitor change -- social, attitudinal, technological, political -- so as to spot opportunity before everyone else does. What passes for "vision" is really just another way of deciphering where things are headed.

5. Innovators are idea oriented. They are always on the lookout for concepts they can borrow and apply from other fields, and they're not afraid to develop and experiment with ideas of their own.

6. Innovators rely on intuition. In a world that puts an ever-increasing premium on computer models and objective measurements, innovators navigate with a sixth sense that helps them assess risks, read people, and reduce complex decisions to a few simple questions.

7. Innovators are persistent. Their passion for ideas, their willingness to think long term, the intuitive nature of their thinking -- these allow them to hang tough where others might decide to quit.

8. Innovators are resourceful: resourceful not just in getting problems solved; resourceful in digging up fresh information and using it creatively.

9. Innovators are feedback oriented. They constantly poll their customers in informal ways, to avoid blind spots and outmoded notions.

10. Innovators are team builders. Inventors work alone in garages. Innovators need networks of professionals, mentors, friends, customers, and advisers to hone their thinking and take an idea successfully to market.