The Basadur Profile allows individuals and organizations understand their preferred thinking style during the innovation process.  By mapping a team, the profile helps explain why a team may prefer one stage in innovation vs another.  

How it works

The first thing the Basadur Profile does is recognize that different people have different capabilities. Depending on the individual, one person’s approach to problem-solving and innovative thinking will be different to someone else’s. 

Some people’s strengths lie in initiating new projects and opportunities, and actively seeking out problems that need solving. Others are at their best when defining and understanding new initiatives. For some it’s about producing concrete solutions and turning ideas into workable reality, while others enjoy finishing things off and taking action to make things happen. 

The Profile identifies these different styles and creates four corresponding categories: Generators, Conceptualizers, Optimizers and Implementers.

Everyone is included and everyone is equally valued.

 

People can be skilled in all four areas of the Profile. But no matter what they’re good at, everyone is included and everyone is equally valued. By freeing people up to do what they do best, the Profile allows maximum input from the maximum amount of people. In doing so it maximises creative thinking and collaboration – the very sources of innovation.

The individual profiles and their characteristics.

Generators

  • Get things started, get involved, gather information, ask questions.
  • Sense problems, imagine possibilities, see opportunities.
  • View things from different perspectives.
  • Prefer generating more ideas rather than evaluating existing ones.
  • See relevance in almost everything.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity.

Typical occupations include:
Academics
Artists
Marketers
Non-Profit/University Administrators
Teachers
Training and Development 
Advertising Creatives

 

Conceptualizers

  • Like defining problems and coming up with ideas.
  • Like to see the big picture.
  • Form quick connections, see opportunities and benefits.
  • Distil seemingly unrelated observations into integrated explanations.
  • Don’t like proceeding until situations are fully understood and problems well defined.
  • Want theories to be sound and precise.

Typical occupations include:
Designers
Market Researchers
Organization Development
Product Developers
Research & Development
Strategic Planning
IT Senior Consultants

Optimizers

  • Turn abstract ideas into practical solutions.
  • Like single correct answers to problems.
  • Can sort through large amounts of data, and pinpoint faults.
  • Confidently make sound evaluations and select the best solutions. 
  • Have little patience with ambiguity.
  • Interested in idea evaluation, selection and action planning.

Typical occupations include:
Engineering/Engineering Design
Manufacturing Engineering
Finance
IT Programmers/Analysts
IT Systems Developers
Accounting
Technical Customer Support

 

 

Implementers

  • Enjoy getting things done and being involved in new experiences.
  • Excel at adapting to specific circumstances and making things work.
  • Like to try things out for real rather than mentally test them.
  • Risk takers: don’t need to completely understand something before taking action.
  • Willing to try as many approaches as necessary until they find one that works for everyone.
  • Enthusiastic and at ease with others, but can appear impatient or even pushy when moving to action.

Typical occupations include:
IT Operations
Secretarial/Administrative Support
Project Managers
Sales 
Customer Relations
Manufacturing/Production
Logistics
Purchasing

From the best individuals to the best teams.

Being armed with a clear understanding of individual working styles and the different approaches to innovation and problem-solving means you can now build teams that work at full strength. 

The best teams have an appropriate mix of Generators, Conceptualizers, Optimizers and Implementers. With a diverse line-up, each member plays to their strengths – working at full capacity in their relevant stage of the process while others work at full capacity in theirs. 

The Profile also tells you how much time needs to be spent on each of the four stages. If for example your team is loaded towards Optimizers and Implementers, you’re made aware that you need to spend more time working at the Generator and Conceptualizer stages. 

No one style is more important than another. To work smoothly and effectively, you need people working together through each of the four stages. It’s the process that matters, and following it takes the chance element out. Like a trainer teaching you good technique, the more rigorously you stick to it, the more successful the results.

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