774: What Innovative Leaders Do Differently, with Linda Hill

Linda Hill: Genius at Scale

Linda Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School. Globally recognized as a top leadership and innovation expert, Linda has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top five management thinkers. She is the co-author, along with Emily Tedards and Jason Wild, of Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation (Amazon, Bookshop)*

We all want to think of ourselves as innovative, but it’s often not easy to know exactly what that means in practice. In this conversation, Linda and I explore what her research shows that leaders do to drive innovation successfully – and how each of us can get just a bit better.

Key Points

• Rather than coming up with a vision and asking people to follow it, innovation is about creating the culture and capabilities to create the future together.
• Innovation leadership shows up in three ways within organizations: the Architects, the Bridge Builders, and the Catalysts.
• Instead of setting the stage for themselves, innovative leaders set the stage for others.
• Often, we view horizontal relationships through the lens of organizational politics. The most effective innovation leaders view these relationships as leadership opportunities.
• Traditional team structures are a starting point, but not an ending point. Leaders at Mastercard, Pfizer, and Cleveland Clinic all brought in team members from both inside and outside the organization.
• Rather than thinking about a decision as final, it’s helpful for innovation leaders to frame it as a “working hypothesis.”

Resources Mentioned

• Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation by Linda Hill, Emily Tedards, and Jason Wild (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

• How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470)
• The Way Innovators Get Traction, with Tendayi Viki (episode 512)
• Doing Better Than Zero-Sum Thinking, with Renée Mauborgne (episode 641)

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