Bill Gates, Richard Branson and James Dyson all have it in abundance. But the creative talent that lies behind their business success has until now been difficult to define and measure.
That is about to change with the launch of a psychometric test - described as a world first by its publisher Oxford Psychologists Press - which measures an individual's capacity for innovation.
Highly innovative people tend to take risks at work, to challenge other people's views and to be intrinsically motivated, says Ms Fiona Patterson, an occupational psychologist at Nottingham University, who has spent five years researching and validating the test in response to corporate demand.
But innovative flair is not confined to a few high-profile mavericks, she says. "I want to dispel the myth about creative oddballs. Anybody in any organisation has the potential to be innovative."
The launch of the Innovation Potential Indicator is timely. Innovation is now seen as a requirement for competitive advantage and growth. The Internet revolution, with its new generation of dotcom entrepreneurs, has increased the pressure on companies to develop creative stars internally.
Yet unlocking innovation is proving difficult for businesses and governments. A survey of more than 800 companies in seven countries, published by PwC consultants in December, found that many were over-cautious.
The first European Business Summit, bringing together corporate leaders, European politicians and officials in Brussels in June, will focus on "Europe's key theme" of innovation and creativity.
"Europe suffers from the inadequate capacity to transform scientific and technological knowledge into business opportunities," says Mr Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, who will give the keynote address. A strong collective effort, with an emphasis on training, is needed to encourage innovation.
Ms Patterson says innovation and creativity have often been confused. While creativity is about generating original ideas, there is an emerging consensus that innovation is about the successful exploitation of such ideas. Asking people how many different uses a paper clip has may test their creativity, but not their ability to turn this into action.
The new indicator asks candidates to rate their agreement or disagreement with 36 statements on a five-point scale, from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
Sample statements are: "I try to avoid getting caught up in problems that have no clear-cut answers"; "I sometimes get criticised for lacking discipline in my work styles"; "I tend to adapt older methods of doing things rather than dream up totally new ideas" and "I'd never try out ideas without proper authority". The answers are combined to give scores on four scales, measuring candidates' intellectual curiosity, the consistency of their work methods, whether they use tested methods or radical new approaches to solve problems, and how "challenging" their behaviour is.
It adds to an armoury of psychometric tests widely used by larger companies to identify candidates for recruitment or promotion. The most common are ability tests, followed by personality tests. The latter typically contain a limited measure of innovation or creativity.
"What's new about this tool is the breadth of its coverage," says Mr Forde May, a management consultant in Northern Ireland, who is the first to have used the test commercially with a Japanese electronic components manufacturer.
"I found it good as a developmental tool. You can't make people intrinsically more creative but you can unlock latent creativity." Mr Graham Telling, an industrialist seconded to the British Department of Trade and Industry's Innovation Unit, believes the test could identify training needs. Someone who enjoys tackling difficult problems but lacks confidence about taking action might gain from assertiveness training. The former chief executive of Artel Rubber Company knows all about innovation. His small business answered the dreams of motoring enthusiasts by developing brightly coloured "vanity" tubing for car engines that would match the external paintwork.
Mr Telling has also had to manage innovative types, who can be head-strong. "There are days when you could throttle them, because they're challenging and believe so passionately in their idea that they never stop selling it to you," he says.
But company culture must nurture such people. That may mean using tact, especially if their idea is not immediately relevant, "You can't say, `No, we're not going to do this', because they'll go somewhere else."
Ms Patterson began the research that led to the indicator while working at Ford of Europe and Boots, the UK retailer, in the early 1990s. Both companies wanted to identify and develop innovation potential among staff, but there were no reliable or credible instruments.
Ford is interested in using the new tool, says Mr Ed Sketch, the group's director of education, training and development in North America and Europe, who mentored Ms Patterson during her time there. "It would fill something of a gap in our inventory of assessment processes." Ford, which is suffering from poor performance in Europe, is undergoing big changes worldwide. It is trying to transform itself from a traditional manufacturer into a consumer company for automotive products and services, and moving to electronic business with its suppliers.
"We're looking at ways of measuring organisational resistance to change," says Mr Sketch. "The idea that we could measure the extent to which challenging behaviour could be constructive and acceptable would be very interesting."
Ms Patterson wants to use the tool to examine management styles and identify those best and worst equipped to manage "virtual" organisations and handle change.
It seems there is an inherent conflict between management by consensus and the behavioural pattern of highly innovative types. "Bluechip companies over the last 50 years have been recruiting people for their conscientiousness," she says. "They may be de-selecting the innovative people."
