Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading InnovationNamed one of "10 Management Classics for 2022" by Thinkers50 Why can some organizations innovate time and again, while most cannot?You might think the key to innovation is attracting exceptional creative talent. Or making the right investments. Or breaking down organizational silos. All of these things may help—but there’s only one way to ensure sustained innovation: you need to lead it—and with a special kind of leadership. Collective Genius shows you how. Preeminent leadership scholar Linda Hill, along with former Pixar tech wizard Greg Brandeau, MIT researcher Emily Truelove, and Being the Boss coauthor Kent Lineback, found among leaders a widely shared, and mistaken, assumption: that a “good” leader in all other respects would also be an effective leader of innovation. The truth is, leading innovation takes a distinctive kind of leadership, one that unleashes and harnesses the “collective genius” of the people in the organization. Using vivid stories of individual leaders at companies like Volkswagen, Google, eBay, and Pfizer, as well as nonprofits and international government agencies, the authors show how successful leaders of innovation don’t create a vision and try to make innovation happen themselves. Rather, they create and sustain a culture where innovation is allowed to happen again and again—an environment where people are both willing and able to do the hard work that innovative problem solving requires. Collective Genius will not only inspire you; it will give you the concrete, practical guidance you need to build innovation into the fabric of your business. |
Contents
1 | |
9 | |
25 | |
Recasting the Role of the Leader | 45 |
Leaders Create the Willingness to Innovate | 68 |
Creating a Community | 73 |
Beyond Purpose Values and Rules of Engagement | 95 |
Leaders Create the Ability to Innovate | 116 |
Creative Resolution | 169 |
Collective Genius 20 | 190 |
Cultivating an Innovation Ecosystem | 197 |
Epilogue | 225 |
Notes | 247 |
Selected Bibliography | 263 |
277 | |
About the Authors | 295 |
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Common terms and phrases
able approach Boston brand Brandeau build Business School Press Calit2 Cars Toons Catmull challenge collaboration colleagues Collective Genius company’s complex computers conflict Coughran create creative abrasion creative agility culture develop diverse eBay Germany ecosystems Ed Catmull emerging employees engineers Eric von Hippel example experience feature film focused foster global goal Google Google’s Harvard Business Review Harvard Business School HCL Technologies Hinrichs ideas individuals innovation requires integrative decision John Lasseter Justus Kloeblen knew leaders of innovation leaders we studied leadership leading innovation learning marketing micro-projects movie Nayar needed options organizational paradoxes partners Pentagram people’s Pfizer Pixar Pixar Animation Studios planning problem production projects RenderFarm role rules of engagement Schulman slices of genius Smarr solutions solving storage strategy structure talented Think Blue tion Toy Story value zone Vineet Nayar wanted