TED Talk Thursday: Linda Hill on How to Manage for Collective Creativity

Harvard professor and Collective Genius co-author Linda Hill has formulated a set of initiatives to unlock the creativity hidden in the daily work from everyone within an organization—not just the designated “creatives.”

Hill and her colleagues studied 16 men and women in seven different cities across the globe in various industries. They completed the study yielding one crucial management maxim: “we must unlearn our conventional notions of leadership.”

Innovating in the workplace can be both exhilarating and scary, but it has become increasingly crucial in the modern workplace. Hill and her associates researched organizations including Pixar, an Islamic Bank in Dubai and a luxury brand in Korea in order to narrow down what inventive organizations do to disrupt their respective industries. Hill summarized the study by narrowing down three key capabilities in creative workers.

Creative Abrasion. This involves creating a marketplace of ideas where people can have heated yet contrastive discussions. This is not to be confused with the ever-popular brainstorm. Brainstorms, according to Hill, typically lead to one person leading while others keep their ideas toned down in order to speed things along.

Creative Agility. This quality encompasses the ability to test and refine a portfolio of ideas through quick pursuit, reflection and adjustment. It’s about discovery-driven learning where acting takes precedent over planning. Applied to design; it’s about combining the artistic process and scientific method.

Creative Resolution. Creative Resolution is doing decision-making in a way that combines opposing ideas and reconfigures them to find a solution that breeds compromise.

Next time you sit down to tackle a big project, consider whether you’ve uncovered the secret to unlocking the creativity hidden inside your daily work from everyone on your team.