Stars facilitate innovation: INSEAD

Good mentors are worth their weight in gold, according to new research from INSEAD.

In Where Do Stars Come From? The Role of Star vs. Nonstar Collaborators in Creative Settings, published in Organization Science, Manuel Sosa, INSEAD Associate Professor of Technology and Operations Management, Jürgen Mihm, INSEAD Professor of Technology and Operations Management and Haibo Liu, Assistant Professor of Management, University of California Riverside, discuss the skills required to integrate, or synthesise, various raw materials in a way that will maximise creativity, and create innovations that help organisations outperform their competitors.

Specifically, the research zeroes in on the creative aspects of interpersonal collaboration from a new perspective: the quality of the collaborator, both stars - people able to generate a disproportionate amount of influential output - and non-stars.

“We wanted to understand, if by working with a star, you would be more likely to become a star; we found that indeed you would,” Sosa said. “The interesting question is how does this happen and why does this happen? What happens when you work with a star that is different from when you work with other people?”

By examining the creative performance of designers who have been granted design patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office over a 35-year period, the authors found that collaborating with star designers indeed significantly increases the chances of becoming a star. Interestingly, they found evidence that creative stars are more likely to possess creative synthesis skills required for creating breakthrough innovations and that they transfer such skill to their collaborators.

Such skills include the ability to understand existing innovation paradigms and create a new one by reconciling distant and often seemingly contradictory viewpoints and then continue to iterate and refine such a new paradigm until it leads to an outstanding innovation output.

All of these creative skills are highly tacit and unlikely to be learnt through a book or in a classroom, the researchers say. While some creative stars may pick them up intuitively or through years of trial-and-error experience, the likelihood of someone absorbing these skills is much higher if they work in close proximity with someone who already possesses them. This allows innovators to observe, learn and practice synthesis skills from the star.

“It is important to note that collaborating with stars doesn’t preclude collaborating with others who are non-stars,” Sosa noted. “Both types of collaborators benefit the innovator’s creative performance and increase the likelihood of creating a breakthrough innovation.”

In fact, some companies today avoid the idea of having a design team with a dominant star, and instead focus on the proven premise that diversity – having a wide-ranging pool of potentially innovative ideas – is key to creativity.

Sosa added, “What we found is that as well as bringing with them new data and experience like a non-star, stars contribute a set of creative skills, rarely found anywhere else, that can have a lasting transformation of the innovator’s creative abilities.”

The paper expands on this to assess the conditions required to maximise the chance of rising to stardom, and noted that this varies greatly depending on whether a star is part of the collaboration team.

When non-stars collaborate, shared expertise or a cohesive social network can limit diversity and steer the team towards “group think” - a phenomenon where everyone agrees with each other, even if the conclusion is wrong. This can negatively impact creative output.

However, when non-stars work with stars, greater shared social network connections and closer similarities in expertise facilitate the exploitation of creative synthesis skills. That is, the circumstances help to build a common insightful understanding of the problem at hand; it encourages collaborators to see similarities among their different perspectives and iteratively refine the most promising ideas, increasing the likelihood of breakthrough innovations.

Most importantly, such cohesive collaborative conditions facilitate the transfer of tacit creative skills from stars to his/her collaborators which in turn increases the chances of them becoming stars in the future.

Vital Voices Global Mentoring Walk to be held in Kuala Lumpur on 27 March

Women Entrepreneur Network Association (WENA), an NGO in Malaysia, will be organising the Malaysian leg of the Global Mentoring Walk for the fourth time.

On 27th March 2016, hundreds of women are expected to join together at Taman Rimba Kiara, TTDI for the tenth annual Vital Voices Global Mentoring Walk. This walk is a part of a global movement to inspire a rising generation through mentorship. Held in celebration of International Women’s Day in communities around the world, the Vital Voices Global Mentoring Walk convenes established women leaders and emerging women leaders to walk together in their community.

Participants discuss professional challenges and successes to establish a mentoring relationship. The event in Kuala Lumpur is one of 86 mentoring walks taking place around the world, creating a global movement to highlight the importance of women’s leadership and to accelerate the impact of women leaders through mentoring.

Interested?

The walk will be held on 27 March 2016 from 7.30am – 12.00pm at Taman Rimba Kiara, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Register

Delta introduces Delta Innovation Classes

Delta has come up with a unique way to get premium customers to identify themselves to the airline, and provide contact details too. In essence, the airline has made them an offer they can't refuse.

"It’s a mentoring programme – that just so happens to take place at 35,000 feet," explains the airline on the Delta Innovation Class website.

Delta Innovation Class, a play on the idea of different classes on a flight, offers one lucky customer the opportunity to sit next to an influencer or celebrity on a particular flight, for free. Delta selects the flights, the destinations and the influencer. All that customer has to do is choose which Delta Innovation Class flight he or she would like to be on, then register with their LinkedIn profile. If the customer does not yet have a LinkedIn profile, he or she is encouraged to create one, so LinkedIn benefits too.

From the description, it appears that there is only one such seat available per flight, so the likelihood of being chosen is relatively limited. But it is still a free flight and an opportunity to speak with someone who might not be easily available.

"Not only will you receive a free flight to the event, but during the flight, you'll have access like no other. Sitting next to the mentor you'll be able to learn, influence, and chat as much or as little as you like about the industry you share," Delta promises. 

A blog post by Delta hosts a video of one of the first Delta Innovation Classes, featuring James Patten, CEO of Patten Studio, who got the opportunity to sit next to technologist Eric Migicovsky, CEO of Pebble Technology, from Salt Lake City to Vancouver. The next Delta Innovation Class flight is on May 5.

It's likely that the offer will be very popular, at least until other brands get in on the action. This particular initiative is only for the US, but it is conceivable that it could be offered internationally or in similar form by other airlines.

*Delta Innovation Class is only open to a legal resident of one of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia and be 21 years of age or older.