I started thinking to one good point for discussion that sounds like “which is the best reward for an innovator?” Does it arrive at the end of a good job? In order to find the proper answer let’s try to define a good innovator profile, understand him and then pay the bill. How to recognize it? Due to the extreme oddity of his job, we can’t made distinctions based on gender, age or race, number and shape of eyes and fingers. You could be tall or blond or bald too, we’re searching for your mind-set. Maybe an innovator needs to be curious enough, wonder on everything he cannot immediately explain to himself; then he needs to be young (as an attitude, of course) that it means to be opened to all of the news and merge them together in his brain, as a young apprentice does (he needs to be an apprentice, as an attitude we said). He needs to be a good communicator, and this is hard to obtain if you’re not familiar with this job. Communicate innovative ideas could be made in several ways; the main point to remember is that people who are listening to you probably are not innovators, so if they scratch their heads more than three times in a minute (and you’re not in front of a bunch of monkeys), it means that you have to change your approach. It’s enough? No, the previous could apply to a good salesman or a doctor or a football trainer too. But the innovator’s profile is typified by one peculiarity, always the same one, the curse of the innovator: he can’t lie about his job (and don’t ask me why). Let’s stop our research now, there are millions of quality I forget, I know, but I’ll leave you the pleasure to find.

If we talk about “salary” we set up a scenario where our innovator is an employee, and where the rules for payment differ from company to company, based on internal policy, levels and relevance. It depends on market conditions, on your skill and on your influence to be able to raise your salary, and that’s the same if you act as an innovator or not.
No, the reward or the compensation we’re arguing about is something different, it could correspond to better working conditions, or better working instruments that the innovator needs to have in order to do his job at a good level, but probably in the end the reward is that personal satisfaction he receives from doing his job. His mind needs to be feed with suggestions and, depending on the field of application, he needs all the instruments to improve his innovative mind. He needs to travel, explore, test, play, and meet with other people and other ideas. And all of these only to reach the zenith, that is concentrated into the personal satisfaction springing out when you see people singing your original jingle or using your brand new air-freshener. It’s enough?

Why do I blog this?
A lot of words to say that doing innovation is a wonderful job, you don’t have to be paid for it and successful innovators are so proud of their ideas that they don’t need more than our appreciation. (Two ways: I’m going to rewrite it or I’m going to find another job).