Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

Collective Genius is a wonderful new book by a team led by Professor Linda A. Hill of Harvard Business School. Of course, I had to read it, because my own business book is called Group Genius. With such similar titles, it’s not surprising there’s a lot of overlap with my book: we cite a lot of the same research, we choose many of the same companies for our case studies, and we provide very similar advice for leaders. Here are some quotations that resonated with my research:

People apparently prefer to believe in the rugged individualism of discovery, perhaps because they rarely get to see the sausage-making process behind every breakthrough innovation. Three decades of research has clearly revealed that innovation is most often a group effort. [Here, they cite Group Genius and many other books with similar findings.] The process of innovation needs to be collaborative because innovations most often arise from the interplay of ideas that occur during the interactions of people with diverse expertise, experience, or points of view. Flashes of insight may play a role, but most often they simply build on and contribute to the collaborative work of others. (pp. 16-17)

What makes this new book somewhat different from mine is that this book is squarely targeted at managers–it provides very practical advice, in the three-bullet-point style common in executive education programs. For example, the three key things that effective leaders of innovation do are (1) create collaborative organizations, (2) foster discovery-driven learning, (3) support and encourage integrative decision making. Their main foil is the stereotype that the most effective leader is someone who has a strong vision, and then persuades everyone else to execute that vision. Instead, they argue,

Great leaders of innovation see their role not as take-charge direction setters but primarily as creators of a context in which others are willing and able to make innovation happen. (p. 225)

In Group Genius, I call this type of context the “collaborative web” and I provide advice on how to foster their emergence. Since Group Genius was published in 2007, I’ve done countless executive education workshops for corporate leaders, and as I’ve translated the research from my book into workable advice for executives, my own message has become much more focused on leadership practice. This book is very similar in style and spirit to my one-day workshops. Practicing executives will definitely benefit from this book, but if you have the money, you should fly in Linda Hill, or myself, to do a one-day workshop with your leadership team. I suspect this book started out as a one-day workshop and then, in conversation with a literary agent and an acquisition editor, it gradually grew into this book. As a fellow business book author, I’m particularly impressed by their long list of CEO endorsements, by folks like Tim Brown (IDEO), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Terri Kelly (Gore), and Tony Hsieh (Zappos). If you’re looking for a good read for your next business flight, or you can’t afford our speaking fees, I definitely recommend this book.