Dr. Gary Michelson

Spinal Surgeon, Inventor

Innovators need the self-permission to color outside the lines, to think backwards, like an author who writes with the story’s end fixed in his mind. I think invention is much like that. I would say the most important creative element of invention is permission to deconstruct the present order. That is, you have to violate the status quo, you have to take apart what is called the prior art the inventions at the time that everyone is using. You have to do that without the certain knowledge that you can necessarily put it back together. You can’t know before you take apart a complicated wristwatch if you can put it back together unless you’re a wristwatchmaker. You need the self-permission to fail. Simplicity is how I always knew when I had a great invention. Simplicity marks the difference between trying to add on as each new challenge comes rather than listing the requisite qualities and solving for the common denominator.

Alfred Mann


Chairman, Chief Executive

MannKind Corp.

I have always asked this question what does it take? I have two children who are totally different. One is an innovator and one isn’t a risk taker. I have no idea how people come to it. It puzzles me. An innovator has to be somebody who is an effective visionary who can think in terms of what could be. He has to have the ability to accept risk and pursue risk at whatever cost. He has to find a product or a need that is unfilled and must see a solution to that problem and be willing to accept all of the risk and be committed to making it happen. People who are comfortable with risk are innovators. If you aren’t really comfortable with the risk, you shouldn’t really try to take on such a challenge. There are people who just can’t adapt to risk and they aren’t innovators. It takes someone who sees a need, grasps it and then pursues it at all costs, recognizing that there is risk involved in that pursuit.

Ken Polasko


Interim Director

Intellectual Property and Industry Relations

UCLA Office of Intellectual Property

I’ve seen two different models of innovation. One is really purely scientific. There are folks who are extremely creative and they’re always asking questions. How can the product be made better, how can it be improved? It’s not being satisfied with the status quo and having an inquisitive mind on the scientific front. Going to deeper and deeper levels. There’s another type of innovator we’re seeing: folks who are continuously asking questions about how to commercialize technology. They’re not just asking the scientific and technical questions. They understand the other side of the equation and are really self-selecting. Another important attribute is open-mindedness. Over time we believe we’re experts in a certain area. But there are always blind spots, areas in things that we don’t know about. I may be a chemist and the key question may come from a physicist or an engineer or a biologist. Innovation is being open to other thought streams that I’m not used to sampling. Every human being has limits.

Bill Gross


Chief Executive

Idealab Inc.

Intense passion: If you’re not passionate about your idea, you won’t be able to weather all of the difficult times that any new idea is going to face. There’s no way you’re going to be able to stick through it. Realism and independent judgment: You can have an idea shaped by a focus group, or shaped by others or you can have an idea shaped by yourself. I believe in focus groups, in customer feedback. Those things are important, but the innovative entrepreneur feels the need for that product or service internally. Adaptive: It’s very hard to tell this one in a person, but the adaptive part is crucial because an idea almost never turns out the way you envision. There are so many bumps in the road and course corrections. The two main reasons a business fails is that it’s not adaptive enough to change. If it will take four years for an idea to come to market, but you only have three years’ worth of cash, you have to make that work.