Putting your company's whole brain to work

Innovate or fall behind: the competitive imperative for virtually all businesses today is that simple. Responding to that command is difficult, however, because innovation takes place when different ideas, perceptions, and ways of processing and judging information collide. And it often requires collaboration among players who see the world differently. As a result, the conflict that should take place constructively among ideas all too often ends up taking place unproductively among people. Disputes become personal, and the creative process breaks down. The manager successful at fostering innovation figures out how to get different approaches to grate against one another in a productive process the authors call creative abrasion. The authors have worked with a number of organizations over the years and have observed many managers who know how to make creative abrasion work for them. Those managers understand that different people have different thinking styles: analytical or intuitive, conceptual or experiential, social or independent, logical or values driven. They deliberately design a full spectrum of approaches and perspectives into their organizations and understand that cognitively diverse people must respect other thinking styles. They set ground rules for working together to discipline the creative process. Above all, managers who want to encourage innovation need to examine what they do to promote or inhibit creative abrasion.