Courses/Ingenuity 601/Innolution/SampleSurveyQuestions

Innolution Project Survey: What are the critical factors that make an innovator?

Demographics:

1. What is your age?
2. What is your gender?
3. Summarize your previous education including level, location, and discipline.
4. Where is your current work location?
5. What is the approximate size of the organization you are currently working with?
6. What is your current position within your organiziation?

Influences and Interests:

1. What has influenced you to become who you are and what you do today? (eg. experiences, education, upbringing, role models)
2. Did you have any trouble deciding on your career path? Were there a lot of twists and turns or was it a relatively straight path? Explain.
3. What types of "extra-curricular" activities were/are you involved in?
4. Describe your previous employment history including companies, dates, locations, and duties.
5. In relation to your current work environment:
   1. What is the corporate/work culture with respect to innovation?
   2. What is the corporate/work culture with respect to collaboration?
   3. What is the corporate/work culture with respect to multidisciplinarity?

Group Dynamics:

1. How do you communicate with people outside your department or field of specialization?
2. Do you go outside of your working group to accomplish your work? Do you actively seek collaboration? If so, please explain.
3. With respect to collaboration:
   1. How do you motivate others to support your ideas? Do you actively seek feedback and innovation from others when developing your ideas?
4. Could you please describe one to several examples of projects you have been involved in which you would consider to be innovations? Please expand on the process which lead to these innovations.

Thought Processes:

1. Could you describe the process of implementing/following through on an innovative idea?
2. What proportion of your innovative ideas have turned out to be failures (ie: have not produced the exact/desired outcome (complete failure))?
3. How much of your current knowledge and experience have you obtained from these ‘complete failures’?
4. What proportion of your innovative ideas have been failures but produced positive unintended outcomes?
5. How much of your current knowledge and experience have you obtained from these ‘partial failures’?
6. How do you deal with victories/successes?
7. What are the ingredients needed for success?
8. What factors in your current work environment (and this can include institutional structures) do you consider to be important to your success? What factors in your cuurent work environment have hindered you?
9. How do you deal with the problem of scarce resources?
10. What type of obstacles have you faced throughout your work experiences? How have you overcome them?
11. Would you do anything differently, given the hindsight you now have?
12. Do you consider yourself to be innovative/creative? Why or why not?
13. Would others consider you to be innovative/creative? (Why or why not?)