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On the surface, many companies that have been deemed part of the sharing economy seem to have much in common: They attempt to disrupt incumbents by going direct to consumers with an offering that is more convenient, more flexible, and often less expensive than what their traditional rivals offer. They have created a new wave of micro-entrepreneurs able to create value by unlocking underutilized resources, such as extra space for lodging and idle automobiles. Others let customers hire someone to do small jobs, rent a bicycle from a neighbor, or borrow money. They have filled unmet market needs.

Consumers are incredibly poor predictors of the next big thing. Their knee-jerk reaction to new technology is almost always to say they don’t need it and will never use it. For many company leaders, this creates a significant business challenge: They know they must drive change to stay competitive, yet they have no way to determine with confidence which moves will be successful.

Overcoming adversity through innovating is a process that begins with mental toughness, cultivating one’s curiosity, and doing what others aren’t doing.

Mental Toughness

The first step in becoming innovative is accepting that the world around us needs to change, sometimes because of unexpected and unprecedented events, and believing that we as individuals must take initiative to make that change happen. It requires ongoing learning and an open mind with a willingness to see the world in new ways. Upon such realization, one must develop an unshakable mental toughness for the long haul. As Kamkwamba said during his 2009 TED talk, “How I Harnessed The Wind:”

Global team leaders who unleash ideas, we find, are those who: 1) ask questions, and listen carefully; 2) facilitate constructive argument; 3) give actionable feedback; 4) take advice from the team and act on it; 5) share credit for team success; and 6) maintain regular contact with team members. Members of global teams whose leaders exhibit at least three of these behaviors are more likely than global team members whose leaders exhibit none of these behaviors to say they feel free to express their views and opinions (89% vs 19%) and that their ideas are heard and recognized (76% vs 20%).

Research we conducted at the Center for Talent Innovation reveals a remarkable correlation between inclusive leadership, innovative output, and market growth.

Everyone wants to be that person — the one who looks at the same information as everyone else, but who sees a fresh, innovative solution. However, it takes more than simply having a good idea. How you share it is as important as the suggestion itself.

What would you do if you had a working prototype of a revolutionary tablet computer that was receiving rave reviews well before Apple came out with its iPad? Cancel further funding for the project in favor of developing an updated version of an existing company product? In hindsight that seems crazy, but it’s exactly what Microsoft did with its prototype “Courier” tablet.

Similar fates often befall innovations within large companies. It is not enough to come up with next great idea. To turn that idea into a reality you have to influence people and gain their support. You must do that in the face of vast forces arrayed against innovation within an established organization, which include inertia, resistance to change, fear of failure, financial disincentives, and the tendency of people and organizations to favor what has worked in the past. Then there’s what might be the biggest hurdle of all, people’s inability to envision something that is truly different.

In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps—college students and new graduates—to do what little was left of the work of the employees they’d laid off. This was in Cambridge, near M.I.T. I’d type users’ manuals, save them onto 5.25-inch floppy disks, and send them to a line printer that yammered like a set of prank-shop chatter teeth, but, by the time the last perforated page coiled out of it, the equipment whose functions those manuals explained had been discontinued. We’d work a month here, a week there. There wasn’t much to do. Mainly, we sat at our desks and wrote wishy-washy poems on keyboards manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, left one another sly messages on pink While You Were Out sticky notes, swapped paperback novels—Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, that kind of thing—and, during lunch hour, had assignations in empty, unlocked offices. At Polaroid, I once found a Bantam Books edition of “Steppenwolf” in a clogged sink in an employees’ bathroom, floating like a raft. “In his heart he was not a man, but a wolf of the steppes,” it said on the bloated cover. The rest was unreadable.