An Expert Shares Advice on How to Hire for Innovation

Artificial intelligence can bring both promise and peril — and much of its promise comes from asking the right questions. Figuring out which questions to ask is something that Alex Cirillo Jr. knows a lot about.

Cirillo, a research scientist, led innovation teams for many years at 3M, the company that developed well-known products like Post-it notes and N95 masks, along with thousands of other products and components for the medical, technology, and apparel industries. He also served as president and general manager of the company’s Canadian division, and as president of the 3M Foundation. Cirillo is also a close observer of higher education: He has been an adviser to the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and a member of the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Private College Council. He just stepped down from the Board of Trustees of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

In an interview, Cirillo talked about AI, how he hired innovative talent for 3M, and how college training influenced innovative thinking. Much of what he said about the blending of disciplines, the value of practical skills, and the importance of personal hobbies and obsessions squared with what Ned Laff and I have written in our book about student success and college-to-career, out early next year from the Johns Hopkins University Press.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Because AI is so good at coming up with pat answers, I have been wondering about how it may eliminate the opportunity to find out if you’re asking the right questions. As someone who worked in innovation, what do you think about that?

I have given lots of talks about innovation and leadership, and I make the case that if you’re asked to lead an organization in innovation and innovation development, you should be thinking about one thing first: Your job is to ask more questions than it is to make statements. Your exploration of a topic is dependent upon the questions you ask and the directions you take — and you’re in charge of that, to the extent that you’re asking questions. When you stop asking questions and make statements, you’re no longer on the quest. The idea is that questions lead you to open thinking rather than closed thinking — and you should always ask questions in a way that’s going to make you think in a different direction or maybe make a different connection.

The second thing is that your communications should always be thought about in terms of connections. There was a guy named Jim Link who worked for General Mills, and his theory was that if you have a mind that’s analytical, you’ll be able to see a problem and apply your knowledge and experience from some other field to this first field. And when you do that, you’re going to get results that are smarter than they would have been if you didn’t have that other knowledge and couldn’t make that analogy.

The areas of knowledge have to be different. So I’m an expert in diamond cutting, but now I’m looking at the creation of race cars. That’s where you find innovation, in unexpected places. It’s not a normal addition to what you’re doing, and it changes the nature of things. So, look at your cell phone. Your cell phone has changed the nature of how you communicate and how you understand and how you learn. And it was not created for that.

In our forthcoming book, we discuss Arthur Koestler’s term “bisociation,” the blending of elements drawn from two previously unrelated patterns of thought to create a new pattern — a key to creativity. How did you find these talents when you hired people for your innovation teams?

I would ask the traditional questions. But I would also want to know what their hobbies are and what their experiences outside of school led them to think, and what their parents or their brothers and sisters do — what they know in terms of people in the work world. Typically what you learn from the habits or the diversions, that would be talent that we can use in 3M. I would explain it to them: Tell me things that you know, that you can bring to 3M that have nothing to do with your major. The reason we want to know that is we want to write that down somewhere so that when people are looking for somebody to partner with, they may find you as a partner, even though you have nothing to do with that job. So we had a list of people and what their skills were — basically, a skills list. And that skills list was not necessarily what came out of their education.

I was extraordinarily successful with that, because I was able to bring in people who are well-rounded. So if I was hiring a physicist, I might get somebody who knows a lot about wine, or chemistry, or physical properties. And we would find ways to use those skills as well.

I love that, because in our book, we advocate students to seek out their professors and even college staff members for their hidden, granular interests. A professor of history might have a granular interest in Southern food traditions, which might unexpectedly jibe with a student’s interest in environmentalism or social justice.

You’re typically looking for people who have curiosity and people who are well-rounded and strong in their hobbies. I don’t need 15 engineers from Purdue. One is plenty.

Farm kids are really good because if a thing breaks down, they know how to fix it. It’s the MacGyver complex. Anybody with a MacGyver complex is going to be a lot better than somebody who’s the top of their class in Purdue in engineering. The MacGyverism comes from the ability to understand and solve problems in unusual ways. It’s recognizing the pieces of solutions that are nontraditional, making the most out of things that people would never think to make the most out of.

The talk right now is about trying to figure out how to hire by skills. What do you think of that?

Right now we don’t have the assessment that would give us a good reading as to what your skills are. You can do it in the medical profession, for example, but when you’re talking about general studies, it’s tough to put a stamp on that.

A lot of the time it’s about critical thinking, or ability to communicate with others, or empathy.

The so-called soft skills. You can get a feel for those, but in some cases you don’t want them. In some cases, you want people who are a little brittle, a little cranky, because those are the people that can push ideas through. You can give me somebody who can smooth-talk me, or somebody who is going to take me to the wall. Depending on the problem I’m trying to solve, one or the other of those might be the better choice.

I would hire in pairs. For everybody whose soft skills are really high, I would grab somebody who is cranky in their department who would make everybody else toe the line and bring some friction into the problem solving — somebody who will look at you and say: “Tell me why you said that. I don’t believe that’s true.” We’re taught not to do that. Innovation dies when you’re too polite, when you really don’t push your partner.

There is this kind of touchy-feely atmosphere in the workplace right now that’s kind of generationally pushed. Do you think that’s deleterious to the work?

It needs to be managed. If I’m looking to solve a wicked problem, I’d better have some people who are going to push me. We can’t all be holding hands and singing as we go. We’ve got to make some tough decisions. We’ve got to tell somebody when they’re doing the wrong thing. It has to be people who can think on their own, who can challenge what they’re taught, make a case for their position, and be willing to stick with their position. Those are the kind of skills you really need for innovation.

Among young people, those talents and attitudes seem hard to come by.

It’s an acquired skill. I want to have people who can build confidence in themselves and make other people better by bringing out their confidence. We can have a hard discussion, or we can have a soft discussion. But the discussion has to be challenging. A lot of people are not trained to do that in college. They’re trained to make the professor happy — or they’re trained to work in groups, and the people who facilitate the groups and make everybody happy are the ones that everybody thinks are the best.