Need assignment by using Creativity and the Role of the Leader By fallowing assessment rubiric IN APA STYLE world limit 2000

www.hbr.org Creativity and the Role of th e Leader by Teresa M. Amabile and Mukti Khaire Incl uded with this full-text Har vard Busine ss Review article: The Idea in Brief— the core idea The Idea in Practice— putting the idea to work 1 Article Summary 2 Creativity and the Role of the Leader A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications 11 Further Reading Yo u r o r g a n i z a t i on coul d use a bigger dose of creativity. Here’s what to do about it. R eprint R0810G This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Creativity and the Role of the Leader page 1 The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice C OPYRIGHT © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. In today’s innovation-driven economy, understanding how to generate great ideas is an urgent managerial priority. And that calls for major doses of creativity. But many leaders assume creativity is too elusive and intangible to be managed.

It ’s true that you can’t manage creativity. But you can manage for creativity, say innovation leaders and experts who partici- pated in a 2008 Harvard Business School colloquium. Among their recommenda- tions for fostering the conditions in which creativity flourishes:

•Stop thinking of yourself as the well- spring of ideas that employees execute.

I nstead, elicit and champion others’ ideas.

•Open your organization to diverse perspectives—by getting people of different disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of expertise to share their thinking.

•Kn ow when to impose controls on the creative process (such as during the commercialization phase) and when not to (during early-idea generation). To enhance organizational creativity, consider these practices: T AP IDEAS FROM ALL RANKS Elicit ideas from people throughout your or- ganization. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page tracked the progress of ideas that came from them versus ideas that bubbled up from the ranks—and discovered a higher success rate in the latter category.

M otivate people to contribute ideas by making it safe to fail. Stress that the goal is to experiment constantly, fail early and often— and learn as much as possible in the process.

Co nvince people that they won’t be punished or humiliated if they speak up or make mistakes.

Fu rther engage people by being an apprecia- tive audience. Asking questions about a project and providing even a word of sincere r ecognition can be more motivating than money. OPEN YOUR COMPANY TO DIVERSE P ERSPECTIVES I nnovation is more likely when diverse people come together to solve a problem. Even within the mind of an individual, diversity en- hances creativity. Individuals who have multi- ple social identities—for instance, Asian and American, female and engineer—display higher levels of creativity when problems r equire them to draw on their different realms of knowledge.

The lesson? Avoid suppressing parts of peo- ple’s identity. For example, craft a culture where female engineers can feel comfortable w earing feminine clothing. PR OTECT CREATIVES FROM BUREAUCRACY As a fresh idea travels through an organization to ward commercialization, powerful constitu- encies often beat it into a shape that conforms to the existing model. Protect those doing creative work from this hostile environment by clearing paths for them around obstacles. KNOW W HEN TO IMPOSE CONTROLS—AND W HEN NOT TO The early discovery phase of the creative process is inherently confusing and inefficient.

So don’t impose efficiency-minded controls during that phase. Instead, apply them when the game has moved from discovery to r eliability and commercialization.

Kn ow which phase you’re in, and ensure that people with the right skills (such as ability to manage the handoff to the commercialization phase) are involved in the right stages. CREATE A FILTERING MECHANISM F or every idea with real commercial promise, there are dozens that aren’t worth pursuing.

How to winnow out the bad from the good?

Have people from a variety of disciplines, functions, and viewpoints act as filters. Also consider using business “accelerators” (outside companies that test product ideas) to gauge their potential. This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Creativity and the Role of th e Leader by Teresa M. Amabile and Mukti Khaire harvard business review • october 2008 page 2 COPYRIGHT © 2008 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Yo u r o r g a n i z a t i on could us e a bigger dose of creativity. Here’s what to do about it. Creativity has always been at the heart of busi- ness, but until now it hasn’t been at the top of the management agenda. By deﬁnition the ability to create something novel and appropri- at e, creativity is essential to the entrepreneur- ship that gets new businesses started and that sustains the best companies after they have r eached global scale. But perhaps because cre- a tivity was considered unmanageable—too elu- sive and intangible to pin down—or because c oncentrating on it produced a less immediate payoff than improving execution, it hasn’t been the focus of most managers’ attention.

Creativity has, however, long been a focus of academics in ﬁelds ranging from anthropology to neuroscience, and has enticed manage- ment scholars as well. Therefore, a substantial bo dy of work on creativity has been available to any businessperson inclined to step back from the fray of daily management and en- gage in its questions. And that’s suddenly very fo rtunate, because what used to be an intel- lectual interest for some thoughtful execu- tives has now become an urgent concern for many. The shift to a more innovation-driven economy has been abrupt. Today, execution c apabilities are widely shared and the life cycles of new offerings are short. As competi- tion turns into a game of who can generate the best and greatest number of ideas, cre- ativity scholars are being asked pointed ques- tions ab out their research. What does it mean? How relevant is it? Does it offer guidance on the decisions that leaders in creativity-dependent businesses have to make?

To help make the connections between theory and practice, we recently convened a tw o-d ay colloquium at Harvard Business School, inviting business leaders from compa- nies whose success depends on creativity— such as design consultancy IDEO, technology innovator E Ink, internet giant Google, and pharmaceutical leader Novartis. At the gath- ering, leading scholars presented their newest and most important research. In all, we brought together nearly 100 people who were deeply concerned with the workings of cre- a tivity in organizations and let the sparks ﬂy. This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 3 Over those two days, we saw a new agenda f or business leadership begin to take shape.

At ﬁrst, we heard skepticism that creativity should be managed at all. Intuit cofounder Scott Cook, for example, wondered whether management was “a net positive or a net neg- a tive” for creativity. “If there is a bottleneck in organizational creativity,” he asked, “might it be at the top of the bottle?” By the collo- quium’s end, however, most attendees agreed that there is a role for management in the cre- a tive process; it is just different from what the traditional work of management might sug- gest. The leadership imperatives we discussed, which we share in this article, reﬂect a view- p oint we came to hold in common: One doesn’t manage creativity. One manages for creativity. Drawing on the Right Minds The ﬁrst priority of leadership is to engage the right people, at the right times, to the right de- gree in creative work. That engagement starts when the leader recasts the role of employees.

Ra ther than simply roll up their sleeves and e xecute top-down strategy, employees must c ontribute imagination. As Cook put it, “Tradi- tional management prioritizes projects and assigns people to them. But increasingly, man- agers are not the source of the idea.” T ap ideas from all ranks. Co ok told the story of an eye-opening analysis of innova- tions at Google: Its founders tracked the progress of ideas that they had backed versus ideas that had been executed in the ranks without support from above, and discovered a higher success rate in the latter category.

Similarly, it was noted that Philip Rosedale, the founder and chairman of Linden Lab, the f ast-growing company that manages Second Life, claims to give most workers enormous autonomy, and says the greatest successes c ome from workers’ own initiatives.

R esearch by Israel Drori, a professor at the C ollege of Management in Israel, and Benson Honig, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier Univer- sity in Canada, highlights the hazards of not distributing creative responsibilities across the organization. They observed an internet start-up offering a new, sophisticated form of c omputer graphics from its inception in 1996 until its collapse, seven years later. While the v enture enjoyed initial success, it was ulti- mately unsustainable because it depended too much on the genius of its award-winning artist-founder—and took organizational cre- a tivity for granted.

Encourage and enable collaboration. As leaders look beyond the top ranks for creative direction, they must combat what Diego Rod- riguez, a partner at IDEO and the leader of its P alo Alto, California, ofﬁce, calls the “lone in- v entor myth.” Though past breakthroughs sometimes have come from a single genius, the reality today is that most innovations draw on many contributions. “Consider the exam- ples of InnoCentive, of Mozilla, of Wikipedia,” Ro driguez said. “All are contexts that bring in lots of contributors. And the fundamental structure of such networked organizations is not centralized and top-down. People don’t do what they do because someone told them to do it. Contributing to an interdependent net- work is its own reward.” Rodriguez argued fo rcefully that, even in today’s highly net- worked world, organizations fail to take full advantage of internet technologies to tap into the creativity of many smart people working on the same problem. (For Scott Cook’s think- ing about tapping the input of people outside the organization, see “The Contribution Revo- lution,” Reprint R0810C.) A study by Victor Seidel of the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School identiﬁed one practice that leaders would do well to pro- mote: the use of “coordination totems” in the c onceptualization of new products. Seidel looked at the problem of how to achieve col- laboration on radical innovations; when no ob- vious antecedent exists, it’s difﬁcult for a vision to be shared. His analysis of six award-winning products (from three quite different industries) showed how product development teams used not only prototypes but also metaphors, analo- gies, and stories to coordinate their thinking.

Ro bert Sutton, a professor at Stanford Uni- v ersity’s School of Engineering, noted that most companies have hierarchical structures, and differences in status among people im- pede the exchange of ideas. How to remedy that? Sutton couldn’t resist pointing out the huge inequalities in salaries at today’s ﬁrms and suggested that if the ﬁeld were more level, more people might speak up and be lis- tened to. He urged leaders to deﬁne “super- stars” in their organizations as those who help others succeed. Wryly, he recalled seeing p owerful people hold forth in meetings even Te resa M. Amabile ( tamabile@hbs .edu ) is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School in Boston. Mukti Khaire ( [email protected] ) is an assistant professor at Harvard Busi- ness School. The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in the colloquium “Creativity, Entrepreneur- ship, and Organizations of the Future,” whose contributions form the sub- stance of this article. This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 4 though others in the room had much better ideas for solving problems. It should be management’s mission, he suggested, to “ﬁg- ure out how to get people to shut up at the right time.” Open the organization to diverse perspec- tives. Fr ans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect , described his ﬁnding—based on inter- views with people doing highly creative work in many ﬁelds—that innovation is more likely when people of different disciplines, back- grounds, and areas of expertise share their thinking. Sometimes the complexity of a prob- lem demands diversity; for example, it took a team of mathematicians, medical doctors, neuroscientists, and computer scientists at Brown University’s brain science program to create a system in which a monkey could move a computer cursor with only its thoughts.

Other times, the application of one ﬁeld’s methods or habits of mind to another ﬁeld’s problem produces the breakthrough.

Even within the mind of an individual, di- v ersity enhances creativity, according to a study by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, a professor at the University of Michigan, his Michigan col- league Fiona Lee, and Chi-Ying Cheng of C olumbia University. Their research focuses on people who have multiple social identities, such as people who are both Asian and Ameri- c an, or who are both women and engineers. Social identities often have distinct knowl- edge associated with them, and to the extent an individual is comfortable integrating mul- tiple identities, his or her knowledge sets can c ombine productively. Indeed, through two e xperiments, these researchers found that people with higher levels of “identity integra- tion” display higher levels of creativity when problems require that they draw on their dif- fe rent realms of knowledge. (One experiment asked Asian Americans to invent new forms of Asian American fusion cuisine, and the other asked female engineers to imagine new fe atures for a cell phone for women.) This re- search sparked a great deal of personal inter- est and has implications for management. If managers cause people to suppress parts of their identity, they limit a potentially valu- able source of creativity. If managers can encourage identity integration—think of fe- male engineers working in an environment where they don’t feel they have to dress like men—people may be more innovative. Managers can also enhance diversity by looking outside the organization for sources of creativity. Collaboration need not be bounded by the walls of the ﬁrm, as Rodriguez noted, p ointing again to networked organizations such as Wikipedia. Many, in fact, see the recent phenomenon of open-source development as the future of innovation.

F or those who may worry that open-source innovation is still unproven and relevant only in software, Peter Meyer, an economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, put the matter in perspective. He analyzed the inven- tion of the airplane, which, by today’s deﬁni- tion, could easily be termed an open-source innovation. In the years before the commer- cial potential of aviation was recognized, the Wright brothers were just two of many enthu- siasts who shared their discoveries and ideas freely and frequently in the manner of avid hobbyists. These “tinkerers,” as Meyer charac- terized them, were motivated not by the de- sire to get rich but by the technical challenges and romance of the quest for human ﬂight.

The openness of the network, Meyer showed, gr eatly assisted the development of the airplane; the Wright brothers participated actively in it from 1900 through 1902. How- ev er, as the Wrights realized how important their breakthroughs were likely to be in creat- ing viable commercial and military aircraft, they focused on securing patents and ﬁnding ways to make money from their inventions.

C ollaborators became potential competitors, and secrecy the new norm among them. The dual implications of this research are intrigu- ing. Open-source innovation, with its ability to t ap the passion and ingenuity of tinkerers, offers enormous potential for creative output, and new industries with proprietary or secret technology can arise from it. But open-source processes may work only in certain kinds of endeavors or for limited windows of time. Bringing Process to Bear—Carefully C an creativity scale? That question was posed by Kim Scott, who had good reason to ask: She works at Google, where she is director of online sales and operations for AdSense, DoubleClick, and YouTube. She believes that creativity within an organization depends on vibrant, ongoing collaboration and free idea ﬂow—which tend to dry up as a business adds people and projects. A former entrepreneur This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 5 (Scott was involved in three start-ups before joining Google), she hates the fact that more layers of management often lead to more bureaucracy—and the end of entrepreneurial spirit, risk taking, and learning from mistakes.

At the same time, she recognizes that it is not r easonable to have organizations so ﬂat that managers are saddled with dozens of direct re po rts. “How do you get lift out of adding layers,” she asked, “instead of w eight? ” One so- lution she offered is greater investment in infrastructure, whether high-tech or low-tech, that makes collaboration easier.

The classic response to increased scale in an operation is increased reliance on process—a standardization and continuous improvement of “the way we do it.” Many at the colloquium, however, rejected the notion that creativity c ould be so straitjacketed. “If there is one de- vice that has destroyed more innovation than any other, it is Six Sigma,” stated Mark Fish- man, MD, president of the Novartis Institutes f or BioMedical Research. Bob Sutton echoed the sentiment, citing research showing that when organizations focus on process improve- ments too much, it hampers innovation over the long term. “The poster child here is Kodak, which kept making the process of manufactur- ing and distributing chemical-based ﬁlm more efﬁcient instead of devoting attention to mak- ing the shift to digital photography,” he said.

“In other words, it kept getting better and be tter at doing the wrong thing.” For Kim Scott, the problem comes when an emphasis on efﬁciency causes managers to try to avoid duplication of effort. “In creative work,” she noted, “you need to have people approaching a problem from different angles.” M ap the phases of creative work. Process management, Mark Fishman explained, is ap- propriate in some phases of creative work but not others. The leader’s job is to map out the stages of innovation and recognize the different processes, skill sets, and technology support that each requires. For instance, efﬁciency- minded management “has no place in the dis- cov ery phase,” he said. While recognizing that pharmaceutical ﬁrms desire predictable out- put from their R&D operations, he reminded the group of a remark by Nobel laureate Peter Medawar: “To predict an idea is to have an idea.” Because it’s impossible to know in ad- v ance what the next big breakthrough will be, “you must accept that the discovery phase in pharmaceutical innovation is inherently mud- dleheaded.” Worst of all, models like Six Sigma are geared toward reducing variability and achieving greater conformance to a desirable norm. But in the fuzzy initial stages of innova- tion, Fishman said, “you want people to work at the ends of the Gaussian distribution. Efﬁ- cient models make good sense for the middle and end stages of the innovation process, when the game has moved from discovery to c ontrol and reliability.” He offered three pieces of advice for leaders in creative settings: Know where you are in the game. Appreciate the dif- fe rent creative types among your people—and r ealize that some are better at certain phases than others. And be very tolerant of the sub- v ersive. Creative work must, like Mark Twain’s character Huck Finn, avoid all “sivilizing” inﬂuences.

M anage the commercialization handoff. Few people have equal capabilities in idea generation and idea commercialization; that’s why large corporations normally separate the t wo functions. The consensus is that, eventu- ally, an innovation reaches a point where it will be best served by people who know how to take it to market. Unfortunately, since the passion for an idea is highest among its origi- nators, projects often lose steam at the hand- off. Management’s job is to limit the loss of momentum with adroit timing and handling of the transition.

In entrepreneurial settings, idea originators are often forced to engage in commercial activ- ity well beyond their comfort zones. Bob Litan, VP of research and policy at the Kauffman F oundation, which supports American entre- preneurship, noted how great a barrier that c onstitutes for many inventors. He described a program in which Kauffman links postdoctoral scientists to commercializers, rather than try- ing to teach inventors to spot market opportu- nities for their discoveries. Nonetheless, many inventors do successfully grow their businesses (think Google). These opposing models high- light the tension that always exists in the man- agement of creatives: whether to round out their individual skill sets or allow them to run with their unique strengths and then balance them with complementary resources.

Pr ovide paths through the bureaucracy. C olloquium participants were of one mind on the subject of bureaucracy: It stiﬂes creativity.

Clay Christensen, a professor at Harvard This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 6 Business School, offered a useful analogy for understanding why. He likened the life of an idea in a large corporate setting to that of a bill going before the U.S. Congress. The idea is re- shaped at various points along the way to suit the agendas of the people whose support is r equired in order for it to be funded. “You’re not into it two weeks before you hear from sales or ﬁnance or engineering that they will block it unless you change it to ﬁt their needs,” he said. “These powerful constituencies inside the company collectively beat things into a shape that more closely conforms to the exist- ing business model rather than to the oppor- tunity in the market.” What’s the solution?

Christensen advised managers to recognize what that process does to ideas and deliber- a tely decide to contain it.

Kim Scott added that the manager must act as a shepherd—an analogy also used by Christy Jones, founder of Extend Fertility.

Both believe that executives must protect those doing creative work from a hostile environment and clear paths for them around obstacles. In fact, Scott warned the managers in the room that, by creating the necessary new structures to support cross- unit collaboration, they might unwittingly create other forms of bureaucracy. Introduce any set of mandated protocols and check- p oints, she warned, “and Dilbert has entered the room.” Other executives and researchers emphasized the need to create a culture in which creativity can thrive, repeatedly re- turning to the image of a gardener who prepares the creative soil and nurtures the seedlings of ideas.

Cre ate a ﬁltering mechanism. Not surpris- ingly, some push-back occurred. It all sounds ve ry nice, someone pointed out, but gardens do have weeds; managers must not only water and fertilize, but also kill off the stuff that holds no potential. For every idea with real c ommercial promise, there are dozens that aren’t worth pursuing. At what point and by whom should that determination be made?

One school of thought says that the people closest to the idea are best equipped to make the call—but only if their personal commit- ment to its success, and the professional ramiﬁ- ca tions, can be severed. Pharmaceutical giant Merck tries to accomplish this by offering “kill f ees.” As reported by BusinessWeek , Merck’s R&D chief, Peter Kim, rewards stock options to “scientists who bail out on losing projects.” W ithout such incentives, it’s hard for people to throw in the towel. Indeed, Kim Scott admit- ted that “we set a goal at Google to cull a per- c entage of our projects this year, and it was a r eal challenge.” In a spirited discussion of how ideas should be winnowed, Johansson suggested that the ﬁl- ters must be diverse. Unless the people sitting in judgment represent a variety of disciplines, functions, and viewpoints, they are unlikely to make wise decisions. Russ Wilcox, cofounder and CEO of E Ink, suggested that the ﬁltering might even take place outside the organiza- tion. Perhaps the best way to tap the wisdom of the broader market is to give it the power to A Manager’s Guide to Increasing Innovation If you’re trying to enhance creativity... ...remember that you are not the sole f ount of ideas. Be the appreciative audience.

Ask the inspiring questions.

Allow ideas to bubble up from the workforce. ...enable collaboration. C ombat the lone inventor myth.

Deﬁne “superstar” as someone who helps others succeed.

Use “coordination totems”—metaphors, analogies, and stories—to help teams concep- tualize together. ...enhance diversity. Get people with different backgrounds and ex pertise to work together. Encourage individuals to gain diverse expe- riences that will increase their creativity.

Open up the organization to outside cre- a tive contributors. ...map the stages of creativity and tend to their different needs. A void process management in the fuzzy front end.

Provide sufﬁcient time and resources for e xploration.

Manage the handoff to commercialization. ...accept the inevitability and utility of f ailure. Create psychological safety to maximize learning from failure.

Re cognize the different kinds of failure and how they can be useful.

Create good mechanisms for ﬁltering ideas and killing dead-end projects. ...motivate with intellectual challenge. Protect the front end from commercial pressure.

Clear paths through the bureaucracy for creative ideas.

L et people do “good work.” Show the higher purpose of projects when- e ver possible.

Grant as much independence as possible. This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 7 turn thumbs up or thumbs down on new com- mercial possibilities. That approach resonated with the company founders present. “The thrill of being an entrepreneur,” one said, “is that y ou get your ideas out in the real world, and they live or die there as opposed to in commit- tee. That committee is death to creativity.” Bob Litan described two recent developments that allow for external vetting at an early stage: the increasing use of prediction markets, and the rise of business “accelerators” like Y Combina- tor and the Foundry, “which are essentially the American Idol approach to entrepreneurship.” F anning the Flames of Motivation Motivating people to perform at their peak is especially vital in creative work. An employee uninspired to wrap her mind around a prob- lem is unlikely to come up with a novel solu- tion. What spurs creativity, however, has long b een a matter of debate.

Pr ovide intellectual challenge. A convinc- ing analysis was put forward by Henry Sauer- mann, then a doctoral candidate at Duke University (now at Georgia Tech), who pre- sented new research done in collaboration with Duke professor Wesley Cohen. To dis- cov er the drivers of creative productivity, they looked at data on more than 11,000 R&D em- ployees in manufacturing and service compa- nies who had been routinely surveyed by the National Science Foundation. The surveys uncovered which workers were more intrinsi- c ally motivated—ﬁred up, for example, by in- tellectual challenge or independence—and which were more extrinsically motivated, by such things as salary, beneﬁts, and job security.

The researchers looked at patents ﬁled by each respondent as a reasonable proxy for innovative output. Their ﬁnding was clear:

Early-stage researchers who were more moti- va ted by intellectual challenge tended to be more productive. (Interestingly, this did not hold true among the group doing later-stage work.) A stronger desire for independence was also associated with somewhat higher produc- tivity. It wasn’t that extrinsic motives were unimportant; a person’s greater emphasis on salary was also associated with greater produc- tivity. The desire for intellectual challenge was, however, much more strongly linked to it.

Allow people to pursue their passions. If the keys to creative output are indeed intellec- tual challenge and independence, manage- ment must ﬁnd ways to provide them. In large part, that demands awareness of individuals’ interests and skills. Scott Cook pointed out that some people are simply more revolution- ary in their thinking than others and therefore more suited to radical projects. “You’re most interested in fundamental paradigm changes,” he observed, “and yet you tend to staff your new projects with the people who did very well working on version 15 of the last big thing. You’re crazy if you think you’re going to get a big shift out of the version 15 team.” When people are well matched to a project, granting them independence holds less risk.

Ideally, creative workers would be able to set their own agendas, at least in part. The prac- tice of letting researchers spend a signiﬁcant percentage of their time on projects of their own choosing was famously employed by 3M in its high-growth era. Google’s decision to do the same has yielded new offerings like Google Scholar. Fishman told us he encourages scien- tists at Novartis to spend a portion of their time working on drugs for “niche” diseases, where the intellectual rewards are often high.

The screen for such projects consists of two questions—is it scientiﬁcally tractable, and does it meet an unmet medical need? Not “What is the market?” but “Is there a patient suffering who could be cured with today’s knowledge?” Be an appreciative audience. The fact that creative workers are intrinsically motivated does not mean that managers’ behavior makes no difference. A good leader can do much to challenge and inspire creative work in progress. Mark Addicks, chief marketing of- ﬁcer at General Mills, believes that people are highly attuned to management’s engagement with and attitude toward a project. “The way in which a leader asks a question can move a team very positively,” he noted. Russ Wilcox of E Ink agrees with this emphasis on the man- ager’s role as appreciative audience. “The greatest inventions in our company,” he said, “are always done to impress someone else.” Shikhar Ghosh, CEO of software maker Veri- lytics, reminded the group that the leader’s impact cuts both ways; the wrong managerial b ehaviors, or simply careless neglect, can be tremendously demotivating. In line with re- search ﬁndings reported earlier in HBR (see “Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance,” by Teresa M. Amabile This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 8 and Steven J. Kramer, May 2007), Ghosh ar- gued that employees doing creative work are more motivated by managerial behavior, even seemingly little things like a sincere word of public recognition, than by monetary rewards.

Embrace the certainty of failure. Arguably, the managerial reactions that speak loudest to creative workers are reactions to failure. Virtu- ally everyone in the colloquium agreed that managers must decrease fear of failure and that the goal should be to experiment con- stantly, fail early and often, and learn as much as possible in the process.

Kim Scott observed that, ironically, the ﬁrms in Silicon Valley that have the hardest time managing creativity are the ones that have b een most successful, because they develop an av ersion to failure. How might that aversion develop? Research on ﬁrms in an emerging in- dustry by Chad Navis of Emory University and Mary Ann Glynn, a professor at Boston Col- lege, suggests that there are particular periods of time when stakeholders become more sensi- tive to the prospect of failure. Navis and Glynn traced the ﬁrst 15 years of the satellite radio in- dustry through the stories of the only two U.S.

c ompanies in that sector—XM and Sirius. In the early years, both companies fought an up- hill battle simply to establish the legitimacy of satellite radio. During that time, both ﬁrms fo- cused on making progress toward a viable model, and their individual advantages went more or less unnoticed by outsiders. It was only after satellite radio became “real”—taken seriously by customers, analysts, advertisers, and other players—and the ﬁrms shifted their energies to competing against each other that ev ery success or failure was put under the microscope by outsiders. Performance assess- ments shifted from the sector as a whole to the individual ﬁrms. Ironically, then, companies’ success at establishing the economic viability of an activity can lead to increased scrutiny and therefore to the companies’ increased sensitivity to failure—and desire to avoid it.

F ear of failure also seems to rise with the scale of a business. Not only do ﬁrms become more conservative as they grow, but fear also makes managers more likely to deny that f ailure has happened and more eager to erase all memory of it. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, underscored what a lost opportunity that constitutes. Any business that experiments vigorously will e xperience failure—which, when it happens, should be mined to improve creative problem solving, team learning, and organizational performance.

How can an organization capitalize on f ailure? Above all, Edmondson said, its man- agement must create an environment of psy- chological safety, convincing people that they will not be humiliated, much less punished, if they speak up with ideas, questions, or con- c erns, or make mistakes. Beyond that, she c autioned against any broad-brush approach.

“We need to think about failure in a more ﬁne-grained way,” she said. Failures in organi- zations fall into three quite different types:

unsuccessful trials, system breakdowns, and process deviations. All must be analyzed and dealt with, but the ﬁrst category, which offers the richest potential for creative learn- ing, involves overcoming deeply ingrained norms that stigmatize failure and thereby inhibit experimentation. (For more insight on learning from failure, see “Is Yours a Learning Organization?” by David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino, HBR March 2008.) Pr ov ide the setting for “good work.” The p otential for passionate engagement in one’s work is highest when the work itself is seen as noble, said Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who has conducted research on “good work” with professors Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University and William Damon of Stanford. They deﬁne the term as work that is excellent technically, meaningful and engaging to the worker, and carried out in an ethical way. While managers can do much to ensure the ﬁrst two requirements in a workplace, the third is more problematic— and not because businesspeople are inher- ently unethical. Ethics usually are upheld best in areas where a type of work has evolved into a profession—when similarly educated people agree to a set of standards above and beyond their enterprise or personal agendas. But even where such “domain principles” are in place, rules tend to be bent in situations where mar- k et forces are dominant. Gardner voiced skep- ticism that any big business, however socially r esponsible, could make up for the fact that management in general does not constitute a profession. “But maybe at any given time there are certain prototype organizations with This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 9 an exemplary ethical compass that others want to emulate,” he mused. “And perhaps that can set off a kind of contagion.” While Gardner did not name speciﬁc organi- zations, other attendees saw hopeful signs that such model organizations might emerge. Ven- ture capitalist Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, noted that his ﬁrm is now fo- cusing part of its business on sustainability.

And the report of an experiment in Peru generated considerable excitement. Peruvian economist Martin Valdivia and Yale economist Dean Karlan, working with a microﬁnance or- ganization, bundled educational offerings with c apital to enhance the commercial skills of the f emale entrepreneurs it funded. Using a ran- domized control trial, the researchers showed that the training made a substantial difference to the success of the ventures—and by exten- sion, to the alleviation of poverty. Pulling It Together As the colloquium unfolded, most partici- pants seemed to warm to the model of management that was emerging—perhaps be cause it sounded like just the kind of leader- ship we, wearing our creative worker hats, would appreciate having. One scholar, how- ev er, threw cold water on the proceedings by asking us to look at our model from the per- spective of the leader. Theresa Lant of New Y ork University asked, “Where is the glory in b eing a ‘facilitator’ as a manager? How do you get a management layer made up of real hu- mans who aspire to that role and will do it?” A possible answer was presented by Eliza- b eth Long Lingo of Vanderbilt University, who described her research (a joint project with professor Siobhán O’Mahony of the University of California, Davis) into the production of c ountry music in Nashville. The music busi- ness requires the integration of many parties who are not part of the same ﬁrm (or even a team), including songwriters, publishers, art- ists, and label personnel. The person bringing it all together is the producer. He or she must e xercise leadership in a highly ambiguous con- text, where there is no clear yardstick for how good the product is and there are no clear rules for who gets to control the output. The more effective producers create a shared pur- p ose in these ambiguous circumstances while still letting others apply their distinctive exper- tise. For example, in the studio, producers may introduce “bad song” and “good song” samples to create a common aesthetic but still allow the space for experts to experiment with their own sound and forge their contribution to the project. These producers operate at the center of the storm without being the focus of atten- tion and are proactive with a diverse group of e xperts without being overcontrolling. The glory comes from helping others realize their unique talents and reach a collective goal—a hit record.

Christy Jones noted that her business also depends on the cooperation of diverse players with various agendas to create value for her customers. “It takes inspiration ﬁrst, and then someone to drive toward that vision with passion—shepherding it and cheerleading to k eep it on top of others’ priorities,” she said. Marrying Research to Practice Not every issue relating to the management of creativity was resolved in our two-day c olloquium. For example, as Fiona Murray of MIT’s Sloan School observed, the group never r eached a consensus on the question of market- based incentives. Some saw their encroach- ment as a problem for creativity and urged managers to shield creative workers from their pressures. IDEO, by contrast, strives to bring market forces to bear on its work by using them as a point of inspiration and then c ontinually exposing prototypes to real-world scrutiny. Other fascinating questions were scarcely touched on. Jing Zhou of Rice Univer- sity’s Jones Graduate School of Management asked, “Are there cultural differences in man- aging creativity? Would the approaches that work in Western countries, such as the U.S., work as well in Eastern countries, like Korea?” The group parted, however, with a sense that theory and practice would increasingly c ome together to advance the understanding of creativity in business. In that vein, partici- pants had the fresh inspiration of a presenta- tion by Jim March, professor emeritus at Stanford University. He pointed out that our understanding of how to manage creativity is impeded by the lack of a theory of novelty, and proposed the beginnings of one. Three c onditions seemed to him to be necessary for novelty—slack, hubris, and optimism—which suggest mechanisms that organizations c ould employ. Slack in an organizational set- ting means sufﬁcient time and resources for This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Cre ativity and the Role of the Leader harvard business review • october 2008 page 10 e xploration. Increasing hubris means inspir- ing managers to take risks. Optimism takes hold when a vision of something truly differ- ent is made to seem more promising than the status quo.

March is unapologetically a scholar; he prefaced his remarks with the caveat that his theory “is possibly useful, even beautiful and just—but probably has more elements of b eauty than usefulness.” But those of us lis- tening thought it useful indeed. If research is to inform the practice of management, and if practical challenges are to guide research agendas, then we must have frameworks and theories—call them coordination totems if you will—to collaborate around. And we must continue the shared conversation. R eprint R0810G To order, see the next page or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500 or go to www.hbr.org This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. Creativity and the Role of the Leader To Order F or Harvard Business Review reprints and subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500. Go to www.hbr.org For customized and quantity orders of Harvard Business Review article reprints, call 617-783-7626, or e-mail [email protected] page 11 Further Reading ARTICLE Secrets of Successful Innovation HBR Article Collection December 2007 Product no. 12089 Gourmet jelly beans. Baseball fantasy camps. A film about a French rat who yearns to be a chef. These and other smash-hit products we re all dreamed up in organizations focused on cooking up the Next Big Thing before rivals could. The secret behind such innovations? It's not just a penchant for creative thinking. Even the freshest idea isn't worth much unless consumers are hungry for it and you can transform the idea into a profitable offering. To meet these criteria, blend creativity with disci- pline. First, unleash your employees' creative powers by activating their thirst for a juicy challenge. Keys include giving them stretch assignments and allowing them to decide how to tackle tasks. But don't let people run amok—you'll end up with unmarketable ideas. Structure brainstorming sessions to include people with diverse thinking styles.

And guide their creative thinking by posing concrete questions. Season creativity with discipline, and you get a feast of great ideas y ou can transform into profitable reality.

BOOKS Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn Harvard Business Press June 2006 Product no. 9270 T oo many companies think creativity means throwing money into marketing efforts and g iving lip service to "out-of-the-box" thinking. But such efforts rarely have a positive impact on the bottom line. The authors argue that leaders have more creativity within their orga- nizations than they realize—but they inadvert- ently stifle it or channel it in ineffective ways.

They outline a disciplined approach to build- ing creativity actively into the organizational culture and leveraging that creativity into campaigns that deliver measurable results.

Drawing from 25 years of successful market- ing and acclaimed, award-winning work, the authors show that bankable, creative ideas come from zeroing in on the one key business problem that must be solved and then rigor- ously unearthing insights that will lead to a spectacular solution. Behind-the-scenes stories of successful and failed campaigns for companies in diverse industries reveal the core secrets of training for creativity: develop a proprietary brand emotion, offer big ideas without a big budget, and get customers to seek out your message. Illustrating the link between creativity and profits, Juicing the Or ange helps industry players measure their success at the cash register.

When Sparks Fly: Harnessing the Power of Group Creativity by Walter Swap and Dorothy Leonard-Barton Harvard Business Press January 2005 Product no. 7936 Where do the best creative ideas come from? M ost managers assume that it's the readily identifiable "creative types" that offer the quickest route to out-of-the-box thinking. Yet, say Leonard and Swap, most innovations spring from well-led group interactions. The authors sweep aside conventional thinking about creativity and offer proven strategies for stimulating and directing the group dynamics that lie at the heart of innovative thinking. W hen Sparks Fly outlines and analyzes each step in the creative process and gives practical suggestions for managing teams. This document is authorized for use only by HAMID KAZAMI ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact [email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies.