Just hipped to this term by my colleague, friend, and singer par excellence, Rickie Friedberg. According to Wikipedia (so you know it’s unassailable…), tessitura is “the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre” (http://bit.ly/4D3NVH). It’s your zone/wheelhouse/sweet spot.
Just as Eskimos have the number of different names for snow (or did Snopes finally take this meme down?), Innovation is such an all-encompassing term for us innovationoids that it’s probably time to unpack it, and develop a glossary so that we make sure we’re not talking past each other.
Your Innovation Tessitura could be a start – where’s your Innovation sweet spot? Are you the Schumpeterian Shiva, destroyer of status-quo worlds; the steady Technological Tortoise (v. the counterdependent and showy Haranguing Hare); the Sage; the Fool; the Gardener (v. the Hunter)…or something else? Which innovation verb(s) do you own? Using the volleyball metaphor, are you the Innovation Bumper, Setter, or Spiker? Where are you rocking it? Where within innovation do you shine?
If you name it, you get to claim it. Claim your Innovation Tessitura.
