Charged Up: Managing the Energy that Drives Innovation

Rob Cross, Jane Linder and Andrew Parker

March 2006

Research Report

Charged Up: Managing the Energy that Drives Innovation March 2006

Some organizations are able to generate successful product and process innovations over and over again. They develop a distinctive capability in this area, one of the building blocks of a high-performance business. An important part of their success, of course, stems from the superior management processes and organizational structures they use to bring new ideas to market. But an equally critical, and often overlooked, success factor distinguishes innovative organizations: energy. As the head of R&D at a consumer products organization explained to us, Nothing innovative happens without someone getting fired up about an idea and then getting others enthused about and supportive of the plan. No matter how good or technically right the idea might be, if you cant generate energy for it, nothing of substance is going to happen.
Pick up any article or book about innovation, and this statement will be borne out. Experts in this arena describe the need for intense passion, for executive commitment and engaged teams, for relentless effort to overcome obstacles, and even for the kind of nurturing normally associated with parenting.1 Yet while executives recognize energy as intricately intertwined with innovation, they also struggle with how best to drive passion and enthusiasm into their organizations. One solution is to focus a network lens on the daily interactions throughout an organization that either energize or drain employees.2 Managing energy involves shaping a complex dynamic with its own internal feedback loops. Most innovative projects not only consume employee energy, they also generate it.3 Attempts to control energy can backfirewitness the kickoff meeting that leaves employees feeling skeptical and deflated rather than committed. To make it even more challenging, energy has to be kicked up and drained off at different points during a project. In other words, when the organization launches a search for, say, new products, it has to coalesce enough energy in that initiative to break the pull of other pressing demands. Executives have days or weeks to ignite this spark, not months or years. Similarly, at the end of an initiative, the organization must dampen or redirect the head of steam that has been built up so it can turn its attention elsewhere. Put in these terms, managing energy can sound impossible. But thats not the case. Earlier research has demonstrated that energy can be assessed through an organizational network lens. Network analyses reveal that people energize and de-energize their colleagues, teams and organizations by the way they interact.4 Not surprisingly, de-energizing behavior saps an organizations innovative potential quickly and effectively.5 People are much more likely to seek out information and to learn from energizers than from de-energizersand all phases of an innovation require new information, perspectives or expertise in order to proceed successfully.6 While these earlier findings showed executives how to identify energizers and de-energizers, they didnt provide specific insights into managing energy to stimulate learning and innovation. Based on network research conducted with 15 organizations, as well as Accentures ongoing research into the characteristics of organizations that achieve high performance, this article seeks to fill that gap. (See About the Research, page 9.) Following a visual tour of how information seeking and energy

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two prerequisites of innovationare connected, we explain how executives should manage energy differently at different phases of the innovation process. We then offer more general guidelines for companies that want to ensure that their enthusiasm doesnt flag when attempting to meet the challenge of innovative change.

his or her work done. These employees played key roles in strategic initiatives such as merger integration and supply chain management, and their ability to recognize and implement key technical innovations was critical to the success of those initiatives. Exhibit 2 shows the extent to which the architects seek information from the networks de-energizers. The dropoff in connectivity graphically illustrates the impact: people avoid such individuals. In fact, most of the ties that remain reflect formal reporting relationships from which the information seeker could not escape.

Visualizing energy flow and dissipation

Exhibit 1 below shows a pattern typical of all 15 organizations in this research. Exhibit 1 shows the pattern of connections within a group of technical architects at one of the largest utilities in the United States. An arrow going from one architect to another reveals that the first architect is seeking information from the second in order to get

In all 15 organizations, energizing relationships were the only consistent determinant of who learned and obtained information from whom, and the energy network was always the most important predictor of informationseeking relationships (it was four to six times more important than traditional predictors of information-seeking relationships). Further, when only informational relationships deemed very effective were analyzed, the role of energy was even more pronounced. Energizing interactions stimulate insights by enabling people with different perspectives to collaborate effectively. Enthusiasm and energy help overcome the natural disconnects between people from different backgrounds and with different areas of expertise. These

Exhibit 1: Network connections in a major utility

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Exhibit 2: Network connections of de-energizers

collaborations create the spacethe mutual respect, confidence and openness that enables innovative possibilities to emerge and develop.

but unrealistic expectations sap motivation. It is up to leaders to help employees reach the right interpretation in order to unleash the energy effect. Although innovative initiatives often move in a non-linear path, most include four very different types of activities: ideation, selection, development and commercialization. (See Energy sources and sinks in the innovation process, page 11.) Ideation: protect the hunters. Innovations often emerge on the fringe of peoples jobs and roles, where they are invisible to the rest of the organization. At this stage, innovations are especially fragile; de-energizing behaviors easily stamp them out. People need some latitude and encouragement from management in order to pursue budding ideas in an easy, low-risk way. Consider the market researcher at Herman Miller who believed that customers wanted more than high-end office furniture from the company;

Managing energy in four key stages of innovation

Each part of the innovation process calls for a different style of energy management. A manager who demands action steps and deadlines during a brainstorming meeting will strangle creativity immediately. Further along in the process, a pause for a blue-sky session in the middle of an aggressive rollout will also kill momentum. Leaders have to understand how and when to tap different energizing mechanisms. They also have to shape perceptions, as seemingly similar approaches to an initiative can be either energizing or de-energizinglofty targets are inspiring,

he was convinced they wanted services that would help them make their workplaces more effective. Since his role in the company was research on workplace design, which had never been a customer-facing activity, he had to enlist the assistance of a well-placed colleague in sales to get the opportunity to test his ideas on actual customers. When customers proved enthusiastic, the innovator came out from under the radar to head up an official and profitable service line for the company. The Herman Miller culture played a positive role in the story. Instead of being asked to prepare a formal business case, this innovator received the companys usual response to new ideas: Lets give this a try.

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In the ideation stage, employees are framing possibilities; in most successful cases, they are doing this with people who have expertise different from their own. The complexity and depth of expertise required for even the most common innovations make it all but impossible for the lone inventor to exist anymore. Energizing interactions stimulate insights by enabling people with different perspectives to collaborate effectively. Enthusiasm and energy help bridge the natural disconnects between people with different backgrounds and expertise. Ideation isnt limited to internal whiteboard sessions. Companies often conduct intensive and time-consuming investigations of customers needs, technological possibilities and competitors activities to identify promising new product ideas. The search for good opportunities to create value in other innovation arenasbranding, financial structure, administrative processes, business models and so onis equally challenging. Effective managers clear away obstacles to exploration by erecting protective umbrellas over their idea hunters. One chief technology officer directs his people to go hunting in pairs. He sends an engineer and a marketer into the field to live with customers and customers customers for six months. In his experience, it takes this marriage of perspective and this length of time to see what is missing rather than what is there. The transition from generating ideas to selecting from them involves more than just chunking out investment proposals or submitting them to the capital committee. In many ways, its a matter of timing. Innovators test the waters to understand whether their organization and their customers are open to the

new idea. Ideas whose time has come will garner enough energy and momentum to carry them through the challenges they will face. Selection: be positive. Innovations aim is to drive profitable growth, not to maximize energy. Nevertheless, it is possibleand necessaryto choose ideas to pursue in ways that do not kill organizational energy. While the energy dynamic in the ideation process requires openness, diversity and creativity, the selection process rests on transparency and fairness. Its aim is less to build momentum than to avoid destroying it. Companies cant devote resources to every idea, so most have a stage-gate or prioritization process to assess proposals and choose among them. In the typical company, the few whose ideas are funded are tremendously energized, while the many whose projects are given no resources feel discouraged. As the executive of a telecommunications company explained, We solicit hundreds of good ideas from our very bright people each year. Then we select one to pursue. What happens to the people who sent in all those other ideas? They never send us another one. Three ways to save energy through the selection process are critical. First, choose projects based on objective merit, not political strength, and communicate the decisions explicitly so the rationale is clear. One research and development executive asks his scientists to log all of their ideas, not just those that have won the heart of a heavyweight sponsor. This enables him to keep an eye on the selection process to make sure it remains fair and open. It also lets him work with individual scientists to review their overall impact and improve the quality of their ideas.

Second, dont just take the negative path of killing struggling projects quickly and completely (standard best practice advice for managing R&D portfolios). Energizing leaders have found it is better to double the bet on innovations that are paying off: employees who want to make a contribution will naturally be attracted to the successful initiatives. A positive focus creates an energizing market for attention and funding among innovators without undermining their initiative. At the same time, projects that are slower to show their merit can proceed at their own pace. For example, until recently Microsoft put little priority on the search function as an important Web-browser capability. However, when leaders recognized its importance, they discovered several cutting-edge initiatives that were quietly making their way forward. Third, treat the innovation process as iterative rather than linear. Todays bad idea can become tomorrows breakthrough. Selection processes that publicly brand initiatives as failures make it hard to revisit them when conditions change. A more energy-aware approach retains ideas for possible future use or grants a full license to a rejected idea to the individual who contributed it. When Bill Gore, a chemist at DuPont, developed a variant of Teflon that could be used to insulate electrical wires, the company decided not to commercialize his product. Management did, however, grant him an unencumbered license to the technology. Some years later, Bills son Bob adapted the technology to open up a whole new market for WL Gore and Associates: they introduced Goretex.

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The transition from selection to development is like a drag race. You have to build up speed quickly from a standing startovercoming the lull that comes as a natural byproduct of waiting for approval Initiatives that have earned the organizations imprimatur now need energizing leaders who can both describe the vision and organize the charge while keeping key supporters engaged and enthusiastic Development: listen to the deenergizers. An innovations development process, with its prototypes and experiments, involves yet another set of energy ebbs and flows. Getting things done and making things work energize practical people, especially when done in stimulating collaboration with avid clients, suppliers and colleagues.7 At this stage, unlike in ideation or selection, teams build momentum, organizations become invested and initiatives become more difficult to stop. Expending effort on an initiative and making progress, however, are two entirely different things. De-energizing factors like continually changing leadership, inattentive or overly attentive management and unrealistic deadlines can ensure that promising projects churn away unproductively. One financial services company executive admitted the organization was on its third try at a developing a major new information technology capabilitythis time under the direct oversight of the companys most senior leaders to provide the level of focus a profound change requires. Both of its previous attempts had stumbled when program managers rotated inand then out againas they found little interest in the initiative from the top.

Some parts of the innovation process are destroyed by de-energizing behavior and others only succeed if leaders create room for de-energizers to be heard. Although de-energizers cost sunshine in the words of one executive, de-energizing can play a productive role in innovation. It can temper boundless enthusiasm with realism, make sure a group has explored a new idea from all the angles and ensure that all opinions are heard and considered. As one food company executive counsels, Dont ever let de-energizers work on the early stages of an innovative project. But when you move it to engineering, thats when you want people to ask all the hard questions. Effective development leaders help the team interpret these criticisms and challenges constructively, cultivating an upbeat attitude to take the realists views into account, but also keep them in perspective. One aggressive government executive led a team hell-bent on implementing electronic tax filing. He laid out a plan that allowed nine months from start to finish. When a diligent staffer presented his task-by-task project plan, it showed that aiming for anything short of two years would be foolhardy. The executive thanked him for his contribution, tore up the detailed plan, and reiterated the due date. He recognized, however, that ordinary project management would not carry the day. He took his whole team, including outside vendors, off to a new location for the duration of the project and paid personal attention to the human side, explaining, It takes a lot of management and minding to develop a real team and an ethos that you will do whatever it takes to meet your promises. You wont find that in any textbook. His highly energized team delivered on time. Commercialization: stay the course. Finally, innovations oft-forgotten long, hard march through implementation to

capture value can be the most demanding process of all from an energy perspective. The organizations everyday processes must shift to make room for the innovation and get re-established again without losing too much productivity. For example, a credit card company with a telemarketing group known for successful cross-selling decided to expand its offerings to include insurance. Regulations prohibit unlicensed agents from selling insurance, however. To begin selling insurance to its existing customers, the company had to both establish a new group of licensed sales agents and train existing sales representatives to transfer the right customers to them. Leaders help teams get through the hard work of changing their practices by keeping them focused on the promise of results. But if the organizational commitment, sense of purpose or focus wavers, energy quickly evaporates. One government executive described the importance of stability amid change this way, Normally our senior executives change roles every 18 months to two years. Ive been in my job for four years now because people need leadership continuity to implement radical new processes. The transition from development to commercialization can be particularly rocky. Development engineers are renowned for endlessly tweaking new products to perfection while the commercialization team tries to get a grip on features they can sell. Handoffs are dangerous; no one wants to work on someone elses risky idea. While its important to keep the original team involved, organizational roles and priorities can make this difficult as product developers are asked to share responsibility for their baby with

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marketers or are moved onto new projects altogether. Teradyne does this well, keeping original innovators involved through the first customer sale, and putting marketing and sales people on the innovation team from the beginning. Effective leaders manage these transitions without a loss of energy by making the shift in roles and responsibilities crisp and clear, but keeping the out of phase participants engaged. From an energy perspective, the most challenging transitions of all are those that involve shifting strategic focus. For example, a dynamic financial services company built its reputation with fast-paced, innovative offers in the credit card industry. In the midst of its rapid growth, bureaucracy and tidy processes were distinctly de-energizing. As it has matured, however, the company has shifted toward becoming a fullservice institution based on a solid, reliable processing infrastructure. Now, the company needs to rally its energy to create those tidy processes it once eschewed. This is an energizing challenge of the first order that demands that senior leadership take personal responsibility for creating the organizational will to change.

they themselves must be coached so that energy at the top doesnt peter out. Taking the pulse The first step toward managing energy is measuring it. Leaders in our research consistently used organizational network analysis to make energizing interactions visible. First and foremost, these views identify those who are central in the energy network. In some cases, a network view helps leaders to re-create energy elsewhere by defining energizing behaviors and employing evaluation and reward processes to stimulate replication of the those behaviors. In others it helps to protect against the void a departure or promotion of an energizer would have on their entire group. Second, these analyses help leaders identify and engage peripheral players. New employees and old timers can find themselves at the edgesthe former because they dont know people yet, the latter because they are disengaging as they approach retirement. A network analysis can find trouble spots with old and new employees and find ways to plug them in. A network lens can also help identify where energy is flagging and reveal hidden obstacles to innovation. By highlighting people in a network who are engaged on key projects, leaders can determine which efforts have energy behind them and which do not. For example, at any given time one large, partnership-oriented pharmaceutical company has 300 to 400 active partnerships with biotech companies of various sizes. Recognizing that poor relationships undermine promising science, the companys alliance management center uses a wide variety of diagnostics and trainingincluding an annual relationship physicalto help its drug development teams work effectively with outsiders. The company

is laying plans to analyze its development projects energy networks in order to improve even further its ability to manage cross-boundary teams. Building the culture Energizing interactions do not occur in a vacuum. Cultural values have a powerful and pervasive effect on energy.9 In interviews, we found that three values must be nurtured to build an energy-friendly culture: playfulness, trust and realistic optimism. Energizing managers create a lighthearted environment that encourages others to bring offbeat ideas into |conversations productively. They are especially adept at using humor to bypass tense or difficult situations as they stimulate debate. They dont balk at stupid questions, and theyre willing to offer creative solutions themselves. For example, Drew Phelps, a customer delivery manager with network services company Netivity Solutions, wanted to improve the companys dismal average response time66 minutes to customer network alerts. He created a game to light a fire under the companys engineers. If the engineer on duty responds to an alert in less than five minutes, he or she earns a six-pack of beer. If response time is between five and 15 minutesNetivitys internal goalthe engineer receives one bottle of beer. For a response between 15 and 30 minutes, the reward is youll get nothing and like it, and anything after 30 minutes means the engineer buys Phelps a six-pack. After instituting the game in September 2005, average response time dipped to less than five minutes and has stayed there.

Everyday energy
As important as it is to manage energy differently in the four stages of innovation, it is also critical to consider the problem more holistically. It must be regularly measured and monitoredwho has it? Where is it lacking? What can be done to bring in peripheral players? Finally, it cant be assumed that managers will understand how to create more energy:

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The second cultural necessity, trust, forms the foundation upon which energizing interactions can unfold. When we mapped trust networks on a subset of the organizations in this research, we found that they corresponded almost perfectly with the energy networks. Energizing contexts are honest and transparent in contrast to de-energizing ones, in which hidden agendas or political posturing keep people from being able to rely on others. Integrity between words and action is also critical. For example, UPS executives only half-jokingly call themselves a bunch of boy scouts. Honesty, loyalty and trustworthiness are not on anyones performance metrics, but these values are reinforced daily in thousands of interactions. CEO Mike Eskew says, When Im in the cafeteria, I make a point of asking people what we could do better. They tell me, and I listen. When an entire company internalizes these cultural values, as UPS has done, they become energized by their commitments. In contrast, when people learn they cant count on others to do what they say they are going to do, energy drains out of the organization. Playfulness and trust benefit from the third cultural value that is important to energy, optimism. Its often easier to see the obstacles, risks and costs than the upside opportunity in a new idea. However, where de-energizers see roadblocks at every turn, energizers naturally see realistic possibilities. Encouraging this mindset gives innovation a fighting chance. For example, the vice president of operations of a global consumer products companya recognized leader in efficient manufacturingchallenged his organization to boost manufacturing reliability from about 70 percent to 85 percent, a level that conventional wisdom labeled unachievable. For the next eight years, two engineers in one busi-

ness led the organization to a wholly new approach to managing production. Among other areas, they broke new ground in developing new equipment reliability concepts, methods of communicating to plant workers and external partnershipstracking down actual rocket scientists to develop the mathematical basis for their solution. Despite the daunting nature of the challenge, the engineers persevered and ultimately saving the company millions of dollars. Coaching the leaders Sometimes executives and people at the center of a network find themselves on the wrong side of the energy equation. This is a problem because formal and informal leaders are a high leverage point of energy: Their behaviors are magnified and have a bigger impact than those of others. They tend to be either strong energizers or strong de-energizers. Whether youre the coach or the coached, six steps can help an executive change from a strong de-energizer into a productive, satisfied and engaged leader of an innovative initiative: Bite your tongue. Try not to criticize ideas immediately. Let them develop and then look for ways to build on and improve them. Disagree with things, not people. Phrase your disagreement in a way that keeps attention on objectives and does not appear as an attack on the person with the idea. Offer genuine compliments freely. Anyone can see through patronizing or disingenuous praise. Look for deserving behavior to complimentwhich means youll have to pay attention to people to spot the behavior. Be part of the solution. Never identify a problem, especially in public, unless you can also suggest a solution or

at least a way to approach finding a solution. Be ready to lead the work to develop the alternative. Start with the answer is yes; whats the question? Maintain a challenging but open stance to new ideas. Start by assuming the idea can be successful, then explore what it might require to actually make it so. Shake hands. This is the easiest behavior to change, but research shows that it makes a big difference. People will feel more connected with you after even this most formal of personal touches. In addition to improving energy at key points in the network, executives must help individual energizers recharge when their own store of enthusiasm runs low. When an energizer stalls, his own performance is not the only thing that suffers; the momentum that naturally builds around the energizer also evaporates. Executives should know who these influential players are and take deliberate measures to recharge their batteries when necessary. Good ideas are abundant in organizations. But an individuals epiphany wont amount to anything unless others are motivated to believe in it and act on it. Managers must learn to foster and harness the energy that is needed at every stage of the innovation process. A network perspective can make tractable the myriad, seemingly invisible interactions that build or drain energy deep within an organization. When this important substrate becomes visible, executives can take specific actions to move their organizations toward high performance by driving innovation while at the same time contributing to the well-being and growth of employees.

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About the research Research on networks in organizations has tended to emphasize instrumental ties, such as those that exist because people engaged in a task need to obtain information or resources.11 While some researchers have explored expressive or emotional aspects of relationshipssuch as friendship, personal or career support, and trust no research that we are aware of has considered the impact of deeper relational dimensions on outcomes like profitable growth and the innovation that fuels it.12 We became intrigued with energy networks as a result of research showing links between a persons centrality in a network of energizing interactions and his or her performance: in this work, employees perceived as energizing were consistently ranked as higher performers in annual HR evaluations.13 As additional evidence emerged showing that energy and information seeking were closely intertwined, we began to focus on the role of energizing interactions in innovation.14 We devised a mixed method approach to further understand both the relationship between energy and information flow in networks and the actions executives can take to support energy where it has an impact on innovation. First, we employed organizational network analysis in 15 organizations to assess both information and energy networks. To visualize energy networks we asked the survey question: People can affect the energy and enthusiasm we have at work in various ways. Interactions with some people can leave you feeling drained while others can leave you feeling enthused about possibilities. When you interact with each person below, how does it typically affect your energy level? Respondents could indicate a value from 1 to 5, where 1 indicated strongly de-energizing and 5 strongly energizing. The results of this analysis allowed us to visualize and describe consistent features of energizing and de-energizing interactions in organizations. They also helped us to establish an empirical link between information flow and energy in networks. Using a form of regression known as quadratic assignment procedure (to account for non-independence of network data), we were able to statistically determine whether energy was a critical determinant of key informational relationships.15 This approach confirmed a consistent link between energy and information flow in a large number of organizations. Further, results from this phase of the research helped us to understand patterns of energizing interactions and some key influencers of energy in organizations. In the second phase of the research, we conducted 26 interviews primarily with people considered high energizers by their peers (as revealed by the network analyses). We then conducted 50 additional interviews with executives involved directly in innovation. This phase provided us with rich insights into the impact of energy on innovation and on the levers that leaders can pull to influence energy in their organizations.

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About the research (continued) Energy networks in the 15 organizations we examined tended to cluster along organizational lines. For example, people in the same function and location were more likely to have energizing interactions than those who worked virtually.16 Clearly, when planned innovations or strategic execution requires collaboration across organizational boundaries, leaders need to take deliberate steps to prevent a natural energy fault-line from invisibly undermining an initiative. An individuals level in the organizational hierarchy also had a fairly consistent (influence on energizing interactions. The one disconcerting exception: the higher someones place in the formal hierarchy, the less likely he or she was to be energizing. Leaders as a group tended to be strong energizers or de-energizers; few were in the middle.
Number of organizations in which relationships had a positive impact on energy Being in the same department or function Being in the same physical location Being the same gender Being higher in the hierarchy Having longer tenure 0 out of 15 2 out of 15 0 out of 15 7 out of 15 2 out of 15 0 out of 15 9 out of 15 0 out of 15 12 out of 15 Number of organizations in which relationships had a negative impact on energy 0 out of 15 Government Agency Utility Financial Services Consumer Products Financial Services Petrochemical Manufacturing Global Bio-Tech Petrochemical Government Agency Strategy Consultancy Engineering Firm Software Development Strategy Consultancy Professional Services 96 58 153 60 68 31 70 77 102 59 80 152 80 125 145

The good news is that energizing relationships are much more prevalent than de-energizing connections. In the 15 organizations, people had an average of 12 energizing ties but only three de-energizing ones. The table below, arranged from least to most energizing, shows that its not only positive energy that increases. In organizations where people invest their passion, there is an increase in both energizing and de-energizing ties. When people really care about what they are doing, small disagreements over process and approach can de-energize people much more than they would in organizations where employees are blas about their jobs.
Organization Number of people in network Average number of energizing relationships 4.8 6.1 6.7 6.8 7.0 7.4 7.7 8.4 12.5 13.2 14.1 18.4 18.6 24.6 29.2 Average number of de-energizing relationships 0.7 1.7 1.8 0.8 2.2 1.3 0.9 1.6 1.6 4.0 1.9 3.3 4.2 6.6 5.3

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Energy sources and sinks in the innovation process

These management actions represent the most prominent responses distilled from a content analysis of 76 interviews with executives about innovation. Innovation process Innovation context: Establishing an energizing environment provides fertile ground for many types of innovations from new products and services to internal breakthroughs. What magnifies energy? What drains energy?

Set challenging targets. Striving to accomplish difficult goals bonds people and motivates their efforts. Articulate a clear, simple vision. When the vision is clear and simple, it rallies people quickly and easily. Identify a threat or crisis. Naming a threat and the imminent consequences galvanizes people to action. Collaborate. People get energy from working together face-to-face with other team-oriented individuals. Listen. Listening to others encourages and acknowledges them. Cultivate optimism. Seeing the upside attracts others to new possibilities.

Set unrealistic expectations. Establish goals that the team knows they cannot reach. Focus only on the short-term. Forget long-term visions and far-reaching goals. Substitute measures for a sense of purpose. Tolerate distrust. Allow political posturing and personal agendas to determine decisions. Cultivate pessimism. Make sure every new idea or proposal is scrutinized carefully for risk whenever it is discussed.

Ideation: Creating new concepts, ideas or solutions that, if implemented, can provide value for those who use them.

Create opportunities to break new ground. Give individuals and teams latitude to propose ideas that fall outside current organizational bounds. Leverage diverse perspectives. In the early stages of thinking, solicit participation from people with many different skills and backgrounds. Practice constructive dissatisfaction. Continuously trawl for opportunities, big and small, to improve the way things work.

Maintain closed minds. Actively deny the possibility that new ideas could be positive for the organization. Fail to follow-up. Ask employees for ideas but do not act on any that they submit. Dismiss contributions. Label many improvements incremental so people see them as almost worthless. Rest on laurels. If performance seems good, eliminate investments in new ideas and proposals.

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Energy sources and sinks in the innovation process (continued) Innovation process Selection: Choosing the innovative initiatives to pursue from among the many possibilities. What magnifies energy? What drains energy?

Validate do-ability. Innovations are uncertain, but proofs of concept, experiments and experiences of others can convince people they are not wasting their time. Put the decision close to the problem. Involve those who are close to the situation in decisions about problems are most important to solve. License out rejected ideas. Adopt the discipline of offering rejected ideas to others.

Station guard dogs in front of the selection process. Ensure that the individual who collects innovation proposals sets up irrelevant administrative barriers. Select projects politically. Rank proposals by the political clout of the individuals backing them. Enable any single member of the decision team to block an idea for his or her own reasons. Use downside-oriented evaluation tools. Rank proposals using methodologies that focus inordinately on risks.

Development: Turning a promising concept or idea into a working model to prove its merit.

Focus on outcomes. Describe the end-state and let team members figure out how to reach it. Cultivate a problem-solving attitude. Most new things dont work the first time. Instead of asking Can this work? ask the team How can this work? Use the network. Reach broadly into the informal network to find expertise, get early feedback, head off problems and build support.

Micromanage developers. Tell scientists and engineers what to do in explicit detail, then follow up frequently to make sure they accomplished their designated tasks. Make false promises. Commit resources and cooperation to the development team, but do not actually provide it. Block access to critical resources. Prohibit or endlessly delay the development teams ability to secure key resources such as outside expertise, senior management support, contact with customers or internal cooperation.

Commercialization: Scaling up the organizational machinery to implement the new idea and harvest the benefits.

Revisit the vision. Reminding participants about the original purpose helps make the hard work meaningful. Use games, deadlines and humor. Take the edge off long, hard hours with tactics that make work fun. Respect the details. Recognize the value of making the machinery work and the ordinary heroes who do so daily. Count results. Ring a bell for every new purchase order; post a chart on the wall that shows progress toward the goal.

Make internal systems inflexible. Force innovation teams to work through unwieldy and bureaucratic internal systems to launch new practices. Demand instant profitability. Halt all innovative efforts that fail to meet the corporate investment hurdle rates in the first year. Set diverging priorities. Set priorities for internal operational groups that punish them for assisting in the change associated with an innovation.

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About the authors

Rob Cross is an associate professor at the University of Virginias McIntire School of Business in Charlottesville, Virginia. He can be reached at robcross@virginia.edu. Jane C. Linder is an executive research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She can be reached at jane.c.linder@accenture.com. Andrew Parker is a doctoral candidate at Stanford University in Stanford, California. He can be reached at anparker@stanford.edu.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With more than 126,000 people in 48 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$15.55 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2005. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business

The Accenture Institute for High Performance Business creates strategic insights into key management issues through original research and analysis. Its management researchers combine world-class reputations with Accentures extensive consulting, technology and outsourcing experience to conduct innovative research and analysis into how organizations become and remain high-performance businesses.

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Notes

1 Among others see D. Goleman et. al., Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance, Harvard Business Review (December 2001) 42-51; L. Belkhir et. al., One CEOs Product Development Motto: Care for Innovations Like Newborns! Strategy & Leadership 31 (2003) 4-11. 2 The exceptions to this statement are work on charismatic leadership (which is limited in impact to a leaders direct contacts) and flow (which is focused on fleeting, individual engagement with a task). A network view generates ways of intervening that will have a more pervasive effect on innovation in an organization. 3 N.P. Repenning, A Simulation-Based Approach to Understanding the Dynamics of Innovation Implementation, Organizational Science 13 (March-April 2002) 109-127; C.M. Fiol and E.J. OConnor, When Hot and Cold Collide in Radical Change Processes: Lessons from Community Development, Organizational Science 13 (September-October 2002) 532-546. 4 R. Cross, W. Baker and A. Parker, What Creates Energy in Organizations? MIT Sloan Management Review 44 (summer 2003) 51-57; R. Cross and A. Parker, The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). 5 G. Tellis and P. Golder, Will and Vision: How Latecomers Grow to Dominate Markets (McGraw Hill, 2001); W. Eberhard, Power and Innovation: A Two-Center Theory International Studies of Management & Organization 7 (spring 1977) 47-70. This study of 233 innovations and their results showed that de-energized initiatives took longer and generated less value. 6 F. Johansson, The Medici Effect (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). 7 H. Chesbrough, Open Innovation (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). 8 J. Linder, S. Jarvenpaa and T. Davenport, Innovation Sourcing Strategy Matters, MIT Sloan Management Review 44 (summer 2003) 4349.

9 J. Martin and P. Frost, The Organizational Culture War Games: A Struggle for Intellectual Dominance, in S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy and W. Nord, eds., Handbook of Organization Studies (Sage, 1996) 599-621. 10 J. Linder, Visible Options, Strategy & Leadership 33 (October 2005) 24-30. 11 T. Allen, Managing the Flow of Technology (MIT Press, 1977); W. Baker, Achieving Success through Social Capital (Jossey-Bass, 2000); J.A.C. Baum, ed., Companion to Organizations (Blackwell, 2000); R. Burt, Structural Holes (Harvard University Press, 1992); M.T. Hansen, The Search-Transfer Problem: The Role of Weak Ties in Sharing Knowledge across Organization Subunits, Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (March 1999) 82-111; B. Uzzi, Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness, Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (March 1997) 35-67. 12 On friendship, see M. Kilduff, The Friendship Network as a Decision-Making Resource: Dispositional Moderators of Social Influences on Organizational Choice, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62 (1992) 168-180; D. Krackhardt, The Strength of Strong Ties: The Importance of Philos in Organizations, in N. Nohria and R. Eccles, eds., Networks and Organizations: Structures, Form and Action (Harvard Business School Press, 1992) 216-239; J.R. Lincoln and J. Miller, Work and Friendship Ties in Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of Relational Networks, Administrative Science Quarterly 24 (1979) 181-199. On personal or career support, see M. Higgins and K. Kram, Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective, Academy of Management Review 26 (2001) 264-288; H. Ibarra, Homophilly and Differential Returns: Sex Differences in Network Structure and Access in an Advertising Firm, Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (1992) 422-447. On trust, see D. Levin and R. Cross, The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer, Management Science 50 (2004) 1477-1490; W. Tsai and S. Ghoshal, Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks, Academy of Management Journal 41, (1998) 464-476.

13 W. Baker, R. Cross and M. Wooten, Positive Organizational Network Analysis and Energizing Relationships, in K. Cameron, J. Dutton and R. Quinn, Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline (BerrettKoehler, 2003). 14 R. Cross, W. Baker and A. Parker, What Creates Energy in Organizations?; R. Cross and A. Parker, The Hidden Power of Social Networks. 15 F. Baker and L. Hubert, The Analysis of Social Interaction Data, Sociological Methods & Research 9 (1981) 339-361; D. Krackhardt, Predicting with Social Networks: Nonparametric Multiple Regression Analysis of Dyadic Data, Social Networks 10 (1988) 359-382. 16 We used QAP regression to determine social and organizational predictors of energizing relationships. The table reports the number of organizations in which a given variable was significantly associated, statistically, with an energizing interaction in a network.

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