HBR's 10 Must Reads on Creative Teams Collection (7 Books)

Find Innovation Where You Least Expect It

by Tony McCaffrey and Jim Pearson

ON THE EVENING of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sunk two hours and 40 minutes later. Of its 2,200 passengers and crew, only 705 survived, plucked out of 16 lifeboats by the Carpathia. Imagine how many more might have lived if crew members had thought of the iceberg as not just the cause of the disaster but a lifesaving solution. The iceberg rose high above the water and stretched some 400 feet in length. The lifeboats might have ferried people there to look for a flat spot. The Titanic itself was navigable for a while and might have been able to pull close enough to the iceberg for people to scramble on. Such a rescue ...