Governor Hickenlooper: “We’re all leaders from time to time.”
1st September 2015
During last week’s Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) summit, we had to opportunity to witness numerous sharp minds share their thoughts, ideas and visions for the future. One of those sharp minds was Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who sat down with us to discuss Colorado’s entrepreneurial spirit and its place as a leader among the nation in all things cutting edge.
In part two of our interview with Gov. Hickenlooper, we get conceptual, dissecting the very meaning of innovation, the future of COIN and Colorado—plus, the governor gives some very good advice to those looking to think differently.
Innovators Peak: Do you find that, when talking about things like COIN, that the word “innovation” is hard to define?
Governor Hickenlooper: Innovation is doing anything different. It’s the same way that people talk all the time about leadership. What is leadership? I think we just keep distilling it and leadership is any time you persuade someone to do something they weren’t originally planning to do; to believe something they didn’t believe before.
The beauty of that is everybody can be a leader because we all persuade people from time to time and we all are leaders from time to time. That’s one of the things we’re looking on how to infuse that into COIN, because COIN is basically leadership.
