Perfect Casting To truly unlock your employees' talents, you need to understand who they are and what roles best suit them.

Worried about your product line in an increasingly competitiveglobal marketplace? It's time to spot the innovators in yourmidst. In his most recent book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, author TomKelley talks about 10 roles employees can play to spur innovationat the conference room table. We asked Kelley, general manager ofIdeo, a Palo Alto, California, industrial design and human factorsfirm, about the top three innovative personality types described inhis book.

Entrepreneur: It seems like theAnthropologist--someone who observes customer behavior to uncovernew insights--is your favorite type of innovator. Is thattrue?

Tom Kelly: There is something almost disarming to meabout the anthropolo-gist. Often, when [they] come back with afinding, you recognize it instantly as [being] correct. It'slike, "Why didn't I think of that?" Latent customerneeds-that's what the anthropologist is all about. I believeit's the single biggest source of innovation in our firm.