Collective Creativity

Do great leaders posses a key that unlocks the best in their colleagues and taps into the creativity hidden in their teams? Do organizations like Google and Pixar have some secret management techniques that evoke genius and inspiration? Harvard professor Linda Hill, co-author of "Collective Genius," spent years studying businesses and organizations (like Pixar and Google) around the world and realized that certain attributes of great leadership and company performance seem to transcend culture and country. 

In this concise, 18 minute lecture, professor Hill describes how; “When we studied an Islamic Bank in Dubai or a luxury brand in Korea or a social enterprise in Africa, we found that innovative organizations are communities that have three capabilities, Creative Abrasion, Creative Agility and Creative Resolution.” Creative Abrasion is about creating an environment that fosters respectful but passionate debate and discourse that arouses great ideas. Creative Agility is about a leader and organization’s willingness and ability to experiment and test new ideas. And Creative Resolution is about the willingness to combine even opposable ideas to get to the best possible solution.

From an intercultural standpoint, much of what Professor Hill puts forth seems to suggest the superiority of an egalitarian workplace. However, what’s so interesting about her work is even in highly hierarchical cultures like Korea and Dubai, great leaders have a way of fostering micro-cultures within the broader culture that motivate and empower their teams to take risks, come up with inspired ideas and, ultimately, innovative products and solutions.

Hill goes on to describe that the real genius of today’s best leaders isn’t necessarily their charisma, ambition or ideas, but their ability to create an effective micro-culture within their organization, “one that is patient and inclusive,” and inspires and evokes wellsprings of creativity from the team around them.