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I have a confession to make.
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I'm a business professor,
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whose ambition has been
to help people learn to lead.
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But recently, I've discovered
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that what many of us
think of as great leadership
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does not work, when it comes
to leading innovation.
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I'm an ethnographer.
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I use the methods of anthropology
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to understand the questions
which I'm interested.
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So along with three co-conspirators,
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I spent nearly a decade observing
up close and personal,
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exceptional leaders of innovation.
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We studied 16 men and women,
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located in seven countries
across the globe
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working in 12 different industries.
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In total, we spent hundreds
of hours on the ground,
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on-site, watching these leaders in action.
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We ended up with pages
and pages of field notes
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that we analyzed and looked
for patterns in what our leaders did.
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The bottom line?
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If we want to build organizations
that can innovate time and again,
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we must unlearn our conventional
notions of leadership.
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Leading innovation is not
about creating a vision,
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and inspiring others to execute it.
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But what do we mean by innovation?
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An innovation is anything
that is both new and useful.
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It can be a product or service.
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It can be a process or way of organizing.
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It can be incremental,
or it can be breakthrough.
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We have a pretty inclusive definition.
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How many of you recognize this man?
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Put your hands up.
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Keep your hands up,
if you know who this is.
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How about these familiar faces?
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[laughter]
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From your show of hands,
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it looks like many of you
have seen a Pixar movie.
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But very few of you recognized Ed Catmull,
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the founder and CEO of Pixar
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- one of the companies
I had the privilege of studying.
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My first visit to Pixar was in 2005,
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when they were working on 'Ratatouille',
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that provocative movie about
a rat becoming a master chef.
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Computer generated movies
are really mainstream today,
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but it took Ed and his
colleagues nearly 20 years
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to create the first full length CG movie.
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In the 20 years hence,
they've produced 14 movies.
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I was recently at Pixar,
and I'm here to tell you
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that number 15 is sure to be a winner.
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When many of us think
about innovation though,
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we think about an Einstein
having an 'Aha!' moment.
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But we all know that's a myth.
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Innovation is not about solo genius,
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it's about collective genius.
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Let's think for a minute about
what it takes to make a Pixar movie:
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no solo genius, no flash of inspiration
produces one of those movies.
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On the contrary, it takes about
250 people four to five years,
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to make one of those movies.
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To help us understand the process,
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an individual in the studio
drew a version of this picture.
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He did so reluctantly,
because it suggested
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that the process was
a neat series of steps
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done by discreet groups.
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Even with all those arrows,
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he thought it failed to tell you
just how iterative, interrelated
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and, frankly, messy
their process was.
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Throughout the making of a movie
at Pixar, the story evolves.
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So think about it.
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Some shots go through quickly.
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They don't all go through in order.
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It depends on how vexing
the challenges are,
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that they come up with, when they
are working on a particular scene.
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So if you think about that scene in 'Up'
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where the boy hands the piece
of chocolate to the bird,
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that 10 seconds took one animator
almost six months, to perfect.
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The other thing about a Pixar movie
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is that no part of the movie
is considered finished
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until the entire movie wraps.
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Partway through one production,
an animator drew a character
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with an arched eyebrow that
suggested a mischievous side.
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When the director saw that
drawing, he thought it was great.
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It was beautiful, but he said,
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"You know, you got to lose it,
it doesn't fit the character."
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Two weeks later, the director
came back and said,
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"Let's put in those few seconds of film."
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Because that animator
was allowed to share
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what we referred to
as his slice of genius,
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he was able to help that director
re-conceive the character
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in a subtle but important way
that improved the story.
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What we know is at the heart
of innovation is a paradox.
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You have to unleash the talents
and passions of many people
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and you have to harness them
into a work that is actually useful.
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Innovation is a journey.
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It's a type of collaborative
problem solving,
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usually among people
who have different expertise
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and different points of view.
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Innovations rarely get created full-blown.
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As many of you know,
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they're the result,
usually, of trial and error.
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Lots of false starts,
missteps and mistakes.
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Innovative work can be
very exhilarating,
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but it also can be
really downright scary.
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So when we look at why it is
that Pixar is able to do what it does,
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we have to ask ourselves,
"What's going on here?"
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For sure, history
and certainly Hollywood,
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is full of star-studded teams
that have failed.
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Most of those failures are attributed
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to too many stars or too many
cooks, if you will, in the kitchen.
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So why is it that Pixar,
with all of its "cooks",
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is able to be so successful
time and time again?
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When we studied
an Islamic Bank in Dubai,
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or a luxury brand in Korea,
or a social enterprise in Africa,
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we found that innovative organizations
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are communities that
have three capabilities
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-creative abrasion, creative
agility and creative resolution.
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Creative abrasion is about being able
to create a marketplace of ideas
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through debate and discourse.
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In innovative organizations,
they amplify differences,
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they don't minimize them.
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Creative abrasion is not
about brainstorming,
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where people suspend their judgment.
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No, they know how to have very
heated but constructive arguments
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to create a portfolio of alternatives.
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Individuals in innovative organizations
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learn how to inquire, they learn how
to actively listen, but - guess what?
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They also learn how to
advocate for their point of view.
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They understand that
innovation rarely happens
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unless you have both
diversity and conflict.
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Creative agility is about being able
to test and refine
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that portfolio of ideas
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through quick pursuit,
reflection and adjustment.
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It's about discovery-driven learning
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where you act as opposed
to plan your way to the future.
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It's about design-thinking where
you have that interesting combination
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of the scientific method
and the artistic process.
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It's about running a series of
experiments, and not a series of pilots.
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Experiments are usually about learning.
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When you get a negative outcome,
you're still really learning something
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that you need to know.
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Pilots are often about being right.
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When they don't work, someone
or something is to blame.
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The final capability
is creative resolution.
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This is about doing
decision-making in a way
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that you can actually combine,
even opposable ideas,
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to reconfigure them in new combinations
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to produce a solution
that is new and useful.
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When you look at innovative organizations,
they never go along to get along.
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They don't compromise.
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They don't let one group
or one individual dominate,
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even if it's the boss,
even if it's the expert.
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Instead, they have developed
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a rather patient and more inclusive
decision-making process
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that allows for both
end solutions to arise
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and not simply either/or solutions.
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These three capabilities are why we see
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that Pixar is able to do what it does.
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Let me give you another example,
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and that example is the
infrastructure group of Google.
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The infrastructure group
of Google is the group
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that has to keep the website
up and running 24x7.
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So when Google was about
to introduce Gmail and YouTube,
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they knew that their data storage
system wasn't adequate.
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The head of the engineering group
and the infrastructure group at that time
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was a man named Bill Coughran.
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Bill and his leadership team,
who he referred to as his brain trust,
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had to figure out what to do
about this situation.
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They thought about it for a while.
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Instead of creating a group
to tackle this task,
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they decided to allow groups
to emerge spontaneously
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around different alternatives.
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Two groups coalesced.
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One became known as Big Table,
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the other became known
as Build it From Scratch.
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Big Table proposed that they
build on the current system.
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Build it From Scratch proposed
that it was time for a whole new system.
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Separately, these two teams
were allowed to work full-time
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on their particular approach.
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In Engineering Reviews,
Bill described his role
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as, "Injecting honesty into
the process by driving debate."
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Early on, the teams were encouraged
to build prototypes so that they could
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"Bump them up against reality
and discover for themselves
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the strengths and weaknesses
of their particular approach."
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When Build it From Scratch shared
their prototype with the group
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whose beepers would have
to go off in the middle of the night
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if something went wrong
with the website,
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they heard loud and clear about
the limits of their particular design.
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As the need for a solution
became more urgent
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and as the data, or the
evidence, began to come in,
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it became pretty clear
that the Big Table solution
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was the right one for the moment.
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So they selected that one.
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But to make sure that
they did not lose the learning
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of the Build it From Scratch team,
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Bill asked two members of that team
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to join a new team that was emerging
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to work on the next generation system.
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This whole process took nearly two years,
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but I was told that they were
all working at breakneck speed.
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Early in that process, one of the
engineers had gone to Bill and said,
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"We're all too busy
for this inefficient system
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of running parallel experiments."
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But as the process unfolded,
he began to understand
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the wisdom of allowing talented
people to play out their passions.
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He admitted, "If you had forced us
to all be on one team,
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we might have focused on proving
who was right, and winning,
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and not on learning and discovering
what was the best answer for Google."
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Why is it that Pixar and Google
are able to innovate time and again?
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It's because they've mastered
the capabilities required for that.
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They know how to do
collaborative problem solving,
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they know how to do
discovery-driven learning
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and they know how to do
integrated decision-making.
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Some of you may be sitting there
and saying to yourselves right now,
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"We don't know how to do
those things in my organization.
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So why do they know how to
do those things at Pixar,
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and why do they know how to
do those things at Google?"
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When many of the people
that worked for Bill told us,
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on their opinion, that Bill was one
of the finest leaders in Silicon Valley.
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We completely agreed,
the man is a genius.
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Leadership is the secret sauce.
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But it's a different kind of leadership,
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not the kind many of us think about
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when we think about great leadership.
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One of the leaders I met with
early on said to me,
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"Linda, I don't read books on leadership.
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All they do is make me feel bad.
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In the first chapter they say
I'm supposed to create a vision.
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But if I'm trying to do something
that's truly new, I have no answers.
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I don't know what
direction we're going in
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and I'm not even sure I know
how to figure out how to get there."
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For sure, there are times
when visionary leadership
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is exactly what is needed.
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But if we want to build organizations
that can innovate time and again,
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we must recast our understanding
of what leadership is about.
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Leading innovation is about
creating the space
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where people are willing
and able to do the hard work
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of innovative problem solving.
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At this point, some of you
may be wondering,
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"What does that leadership
really look like?"
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At Pixar, they understand
that innovation takes a village.
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The leaders focus on building
a sense of community
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and building those three capabilities.
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How do they define leadership?
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They say leadership
is about creating a world
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to which people want to belong.
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What kind of world do people
want to belong in at Pixar?
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A world where you're
living at the frontier.
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What do they focus their time on?
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Not on creating a vision.
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Instead they spend
their time thinking about,
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"How do we design a studio that has
a sensibility of a public square
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so that people will interact?
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Let's put in a policy that anyone,
no matter what their level or role,
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is allowed to give notes to the director
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about how they feel
about a particular film.
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You know what, what can
we do to make sure
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that all the disruptors, all the
minority voices in this organization,
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speak up and are heard?
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And, finally, let's bestow credit
in a very generous way."
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I don't know if you've ever looked
at the credits of a Pixar movie,
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but the babies born during
a production are listed there.
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(Laugher)
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How did Bill think about
what his role was?
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Bill said, "I lead
a volunteer organization.
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Talented people don't want
to follow me anywhere.
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They want to co-create
with me the future.
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My job is to nurture the bottom-up
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and not let it degenerate into chaos."
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How did he see his role?
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"I'm a role model,
I'm a human glue,
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I'm a connector, I'm an
aggregator of viewpoints.
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I'm never a dictator of viewpoints."
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Advice about how you exercise the role,
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"Hire people who argue with you.
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And, guess what?
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Sometimes it's best to be
deliberately fuzzy and vague."
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Some of you may
be wondering now,
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"What are these people thinking?"
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They're thinking,
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"I'm not the visionary,
I'm the social architect."
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I'm creating the space where
people are willing and able
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to share and combine
their talents and passions."
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If some of you are worrying now
that you don't work at a Pixar,
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or you don't work at a Google,
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I want to tell you that
there's still hope.
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We've studied many organizations
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that were not organization
you'd think of as ones
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where a lot of innovation happens.
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We studied a general counsel
in a pharmaceutical company
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who had to figure out how
to get the outside lawyers,
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19 competitors, to collaborate
and innovate.
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We studied the head of marketing
at a German automaker
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where, fundamentally, they believed
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that it was the design
engineers, not the marketeers
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who were allowed to be innovative.
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We also studied Vineet Nayar
at HCL technologies,
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an Indian outsourcing company.
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When we met Vineet,
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his company was about, in his
words, to become irrelevant.
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We watched as he turned that company
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into a global dynamo of IT innovation.
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At HCL technologies,
like at many companies,
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the leaders had learned to see
their role as setting direction
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and making sure that
no one deviated from it.
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What he did is tell them
it was time for them
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to think about rethinking
what they were supposed to do.
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Because what was happening
is that everybody was looking up
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and you weren't seeing
the bottom-up innovation
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we saw at Pixar or Google.
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So they began to work on that.
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They stopped giving answers, they
stopped trying to provide solutions.
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Instead, what they did
is they began to see
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the people at the bottom of the
pyramid, the young sparks,
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the people who were
closest to the customers,
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as the source of innovation.
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They began to transfer
the organization's growth
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to that level.
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In Vineet's language, this was
about inverting the pyramid
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so that you could unleash
the power of the many
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by loosening the strength
hold of the few
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and increase the quality
and the speed of innovation
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that was happening every day.
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For sure, Vineet and all the
other leaders that we studied
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were in fact visionaries.
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For sure, they understood
that that was not their role.
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I don't think it is accidental that
many of you did not recognize Ed.
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Because Ed, like Vineet, understands
that our role as leaders
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is to set the stage, not perform on it.
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If we want to invent a better future,
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and I suspect that's why
many of us are here,
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then we need to reimagine our task.
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Our task is to create the space
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where everybody's slices of genius
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can be unleashed and harnessed,
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and turned into works
of collective genius.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)