Too often we think of innovation as out of reach, but we all can cultivate daily acts of creativity, little baby breakthroughs.

These days I’m on a mission to help everyday people become everyday innovators. I started my career as a jazz guitarist, then went on to build and sell five tech companies. I then started investing in other tech companies and ended up creating about 100 startups at several billion dollars of returns.

But returns like that don’t happen by only shooting for the big stuff. The best innovators do something different. They cultivate small, daily acts of creativity that end up being worthwhile. Think of these as micro innovations; they are less risky and more accessible. We can all be innovators. These small wins add up to big wins, and we are building critical skills throughout. Think of it as a more pragmatic approach to building creativity and injecting it into our daily lives.

Why is this so important right now? Well, the one thing that COVID-19 has taught us is that we can no longer simply rely on the models of the past and expect the same result today. We need an entirely new and fresh approach in order to meet the challenges of the day. Don’t just take my word for it. The World Economic Forum released its survey of the top skills needed in the modern workforce. Four of the top five tied to human creativity are the hard skills we learn, but many of those have become automated, outsourced and commoditized, whereas those previously thought of as soft skills — creative skills — are the ones that allow us to win.

Tapping into this natural gift can be the exact edge we are looking for. There are some common patterns and mindsets of the most innovative leaders today. I’d like to share three big ideas that you could put into use. Let’s look at the three core mindsets of everyday innovators.

Mindset No. 1 is “Break it to fix it.” How many times have we heard the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? That’s terrible advice. Why would we wait until something has failed to get on with an upgrade? We owe it to ourselves to do the opposite, to proactively look at what might be working, examine it and rebuild it better, that is, break it to fix it. The reason most of us don’t do this is because we are afraid of the risk. Too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new, but we underestimate the risk of standing still.

I built an innovation tool kit, or practical tools to allow us to bring our creativity to the surface, that is easy for us to implement. One is simply called the “borrowed idea.” Borrowing is simple. We just look outside of our normal worldview, something going on in a different industry or in sports or the arts that we can borrow and bring back home.

An example is the Royal London Hospital, which was trying to reduce errors made on patients. These errors were often made during periods of transition, such as when a patient was transferred from one part of the hospital to another during a shift change. They could have reviewed all the medical literature. They could have visited other hospitals. Instead they took a field trip. They went to the F1 races to watch specifically the Ferrari F1 pit crew. Of course, they are not practicing health care, but they are doing something similar: fast turns, high-precision transitions. The hospital administrators and the health care professionals interviewed the crew members. They took those ideas back to the hospital. They borrowed the ideas and, in turn, enjoyed remarkable outcomes: a significant reduction in errors made on patients.

The No. 2 core mindset of everyday innovators is “Reach for weird.” What I’m saying is not to be silly, but I’m encouraging you to try to find the unexpected approach, the bizarre unorthodox oddball idea that can make all the difference in the world because weird is a strategy that works.

Do you ever go to the market and can’t decide if you should buy the yellow bananas or the green ones? You buy the yellow bananas, but four days later, they are all mushy. So then you buy the green bananas. You have to wait a month for a decent banana. Now, if you were in the banana business, instead of the financial professional services business, you might say, “There’s nothing I can do. That’s just how bananas are.” But one company in Korea decided to reach for weird. Its bananas are packaged by ripeness. So, as each day goes on, the next banana is perfectly ripe for that day. Same bananas, but a weird approach to marketing them. And here’s the beautiful thing, they are charging three times per ounce of bananas compared to the competition.

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s clients are sick kids and their families. The leaders of this hospital wanted to create a better experience for those kids. The obvious approach might be softer pillows. But the reach-for-weird approach? Their window washers are dressed up like superheroes. No productivity is lost. They have to clean the windows anyway, but now they are entertaining the kids, and it’s an absolute game changer. It takes the attention away from their medical care. The kids look forward to it for days.

The No. 3 core mindset of everyday innovators is called “Fall seven times, but stand up eight.” I borrowed the phrase from a Japanese proverb, but essentially it’s about creative resilience. It’s recognizing that we are inevitably going to stumble, but we get back up with a little more creativity. That’s what allows us to carry the day.

The single biggest blocker of creativity is not natural talent. It’s the fear of failure. One organizational psychologist in Sweden decided to take this on. He wanted to show everybody the importance, the crucial nature, that failure plays in innovation. So he created a museum for it, the Museum of Failure, which encourages people to keep going once they make a mistake. My all-time favorite invention there has to be for the golfer who can’t hold it for nine holes. Meet the UroClub. Yes, it’s exactly what it looks like: a urinal disguised as a golf club that has a little screw on top. A privacy towel fits in your golf bag. This was not a hit, of course, but it’s still available online as a gag gift.

When we see something like this, our hearts go out, we extend compassion, but when we ourselves screw something up, we do no such thing. Let’s give ourselves that same ounce of compassion that we are giving to the UroClub. Let’s use our failures to drive creativity.

I want to leave you with an innovation challenge. In the next seven days, while these ideas are still fresh in your mind, see if you can bring just one big little breakthrough to the surface, one baby idea. Don’t even worry about doing it. All I want you to do is think of it. Here’s what will happen: Ideas are contagious. One idea becomes five ideas becomes 13 ideas. And while you create this momentum, pretty soon creativity isn’t something that you do; it’s something that you are. If we can give ourselves that little boost, we’ll create this groundswell of activity, and we become unstoppable. We’re living in a world of difficulty and volatility and inflation and currency fluctuations, but we’re also living in a world of profound opportunity. Let’s seize it together, one big little breakthrough at a time.