In a recent post on the innovator’s perception, Ellen Di Resta highlights the importance of accurately reading an individual and the way they see the world before assessing their ability to innovate.

What I do know now is that when you are assessing someone’s ability to successfully innovate, it might be useful to stop and think about how they perceive the world. Are they able to see similarities in dissimilar things? Do the similarities make sense? Is the person assessing them able to tell the difference?

She develops and emphasizes the changes in our society and the skills needed to succeed in the new economy (capacity for innovation and creativity being a major one) .

As John Hagel states in many different ways in his blog, we are about to enter a Great Shift in how our world works. It might be time to figure out how to define perceptual skills that could go easily unrecognized in the old economy, yet will be absolutely necessary for success in the new economy.