Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova. 

This week I want to revisit an insightful conversation about invitation with Dr. Linda Hill. 

Dr. Linda Hill is the Wallace Brett Dohm Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the chair of the Leadership Initiative. She is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and is the co-author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation and Being the Boss. Dr. Hill is also the co-founder of Paradox Strategies and the co-creator of the Innovation Quotient. She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top 10 management thinkers in the world in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015.  Her TED Talk, How to Manage Our Collective Creativity, has gotten more than 2 million views.   

THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… leaders and aspiring innovators. 

TODAY’S MAIN MESSAGE… there is a misconception about leadership and leading innovation.  Leadership is communicating a vision and inspiring others to fulfill that vision.  Leading innovation is about creating an environment for people to be willing to go down that innovation path with you. The innovation path is paved with a greater purpose to do the hard, emotional, and intellectual work of innovating.    

According to Dr. Hill, here are the 3 things we know about innovation: 

1. Innovations are not the result of individuals having ‘aha’ moments but are a result of a diverse collaboration of people.  

2. You cannot plan an innovation; it’s a messy process of discovery riddled with error. 

3.  Innovations are a combination of ideas. 

If you want to lead and inspire innovation, you must have a culture where people are willing to get their hands dirty but also feel like they are part of the process. 

WHAT I LOVE MOST… this episode is a crash course in how to be a leader and lead change when you are trying to drive innovation.  Yes, leading change is different from leading innovation - it’s about creating an environment to let people co-create with you. Simply, let yourself breathe and give yourself and your team time to try things. Finally, I love Dr. Hill’s idea that innovation is a voluntary act…a bottom-up journey and not the other way around.   

Running time: 38:42

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