A new kind of leader

“When it comes to innovation, leadership matters, and it’s not leadership as commonly conceived today.”
Introduction to Collective Genius (Hill et al. 2014)

They spent years studying leaders at companies that were hotbeds of innovation – Pixar Animation Studios, Google, Pfizer, IBM, HCL Technologies, Volkswagen, and others.

What Dr. Linda Hill and her co-authors of Collective Genius discovered, it turns out, was that the leaders they studied had something in common. They all viewed innovation as a team sport and their role as someone who can set the stage, not perform on it.

“The diversity innovation thrives on, the conflict of ideas and options it requires, the patience it needs to test and learn from multiple approaches, and the courage it demands to hold options open until possibilities can be integrated in new and creative ways – all these things can make innovative problem solving feel awkward, stressful, even unnatural,” the authors write. “Without leadership, internal forces common to virtually all groups will stifle and discourage innovation, in spite of everyone’s rhetoric about how much they want it.”

How the organizations they studied were able to weather the creative storms as hundreds of people time and again solved problems together in new ways became the basis for their award-winning book and a framework to help leaders navigate the art and practice of leading innovation. Their findings were recently confirmed by new studies of companies that are successfully managing digital transformation.

Now you and the leaders at your company can experience a taste of the new Collective Genius simulation and learning journey from our thought leader partners at Paradox Strategies. It’s designed to bring that framework to life and put it to work within your organization.

Greg Brandeau, a co-author of the book who was also SVP of Technology during some of Pixar’s most challenging and inventive early years, will be our special guest as we celebrate and preview the new simulation with our friends on Thursday, July 28.

If you’d like a personal invitation, please reach out to your Advantage partner or contact us. We’d love to tell you more and have you to join us for the experience!

One great thing for 05.10.22 – Dr. Linda Hill joins Brené Brown on her Dare to Lead podcast