Collective Genius

INTRODUCTION

Why does the world need yet another book on innovation or leadership? Haven't both been studied in great depth?

Our answer is simple: it needs this book precisely because it's not another book on either of those familiar topics. It is, instead, a book about a topic much less discussed or understood—leadership and innovation, or the role of the leader in creating a more innovative organization.

Search the literature and you'll discover what we found—volumes of research on innovation and as many or more on leadership, but almost nothing on the connection between the two.¹ Why is this so? Perhaps practicing leaders and management thinkers have simply assumed a “good” leader in all other respects would be an effective leader of innovation ...