Linda Hill: How to manage for collective creativity

Summary

The speaker, a business professor and ethnographer, shares insights from a decade-long study on leading innovation. Observing leaders in diverse industries, she highlights that innovation is not about solo genius or visionary leadership but about 'collective genius.' Using examples from Pixar and Google, she emphasizes that successful innovation relies on fostering environments where ideas are freely debated, tested, and refined. Leaders must create spaces for collaboration, discovery-driven learning, and inclusive decision-making, allowing teams to harness their unique talents to solve complex problems collectively.

Takeaways

• 🤔 Leadership for innovation requires unlearning traditional leadership methods, focusing instead on fostering collaboration and experimentation.
• 🌍 Innovation is a collective process, not a result of solo genius. It involves many people from different backgrounds working together over time.
• 🎬 Pixar's creative process is messy and iterative, often involving hundreds of people working for years on a single film, where ideas evolve continuously.
• 💡 Creative organizations like Pixar and Google encourage 'creative abrasion,' where heated but constructive debates lead to diverse ideas.
• 🔬 Innovation is a process of trial and error, driven by 'creative agility'—rapid experimentation, reflection, and adjustments to refine ideas.
• 🔀 Creative resolution means combining opposing ideas to create new, innovative solutions without compromising or letting one view dominate.
• 👥 Leaders of innovation, such as at Pixar and Google, see their role as creating an environment where collaboration and creativity can thrive, rather than dictating a vision.
• 🏗 Pixar’s leadership focuses on building a community and fostering an inclusive decision-making process where everyone’s voice is heard.
• 🧠 Google’s leadership, like Bill Coughran, allows parallel ideas to develop, fostering creativity and learning instead of forcing immediate consensus.
• 🔄 Successful innovation requires 'bottom-up' contributions from all levels, as seen in companies like HCL Technologies, where leadership inverted traditional hierarchies to empower front-line employees.

Q & A

What did the speaker discover about traditional leadership in relation to innovation?

The speaker discovered that traditional notions of leadership, such as creating a vision and inspiring others to execute it, do not work effectively when leading innovation. Instead, innovation leadership requires fostering collaboration and collective problem-solving.

How does the speaker define innovation?

The speaker defines innovation as anything that is both new and useful. It can be a product, service, process, or way of organizing, and can range from incremental improvements to breakthrough ideas.

What is 'collective genius' and how does it relate to innovation?

'Collective genius' refers to the idea that innovation is not the result of solo genius but rather the collective efforts of diverse groups. Innovation emerges from collaborative problem-solving, where many individuals contribute their expertise and perspectives.

What are the three capabilities that innovative organizations possess, according to the speaker?

The three capabilities are creative abrasion, creative agility, and creative resolution. These allow organizations to foster a marketplace of ideas, engage in iterative learning, and make decisions that combine opposing viewpoints to create new and useful solutions.

How does Pixar exemplify creative problem-solving during the production of a movie?

Pixar exemplifies creative problem-solving by allowing animators to share their ideas and collaborate on scenes. For example, when an animator introduced a subtle change to a character's eyebrow, the director initially rejected it but later reconsidered, ultimately improving the story.

What role does leadership play in fostering innovation at companies like Pixar and Google?

Leadership in innovative companies like Pixar and Google involves creating an environment where collaboration and creativity thrive. Leaders act as social architects, fostering community, amplifying differences, and allowing for bottom-up contributions rather than dictating direction.

How does Google's 'brain trust' approach illustrate creative resolution?

Google’s 'brain trust' approach illustrates creative resolution by allowing multiple teams to work on different solutions (Big Table vs. Build It From Scratch). The teams ran parallel experiments, and through debate and testing, they combined the best ideas from both approaches.

What does the speaker mean by 'discovery-driven learning'?

Discovery-driven learning refers to an approach where organizations learn by doing, through experiments and iterative testing. Instead of planning everything in advance, they adapt and refine their ideas based on the insights gained during the process.

Why does the speaker believe visionary leadership is not always effective for innovation?

The speaker believes that visionary leadership, where leaders set a clear direction, is not always effective for innovation because innovation often involves uncertainty and ambiguity. Leaders need to create spaces for experimentation and collaboration rather than dictating the path forward.

What lesson can be learned from HCL Technologies about fostering innovation?

At HCL Technologies, leaders realized that bottom-up innovation, driven by employees closest to the customers, was key to staying competitive. By inverting the organizational pyramid and empowering lower-level employees to innovate, they accelerated growth and increased the quality of their solutions.