Isaac Getz

The Role of Flexibility in Innovation

Abstract: Flexibility is the ability to change. Innovation involves different types of change. In this chapter we will examine the importance of flexibility for different aspects of innovation. Different types of flexibility will be considered throughout the chapter, such as adaptive flexibility (the ability to change as a function of task requirements) and spontaneous flexibility (the tendency to change for intrinsic reasons, to try out a variety of methods). Finally, we will discuss how different types of flexibility can be important at different stages in the innovation process.

Liberating Leadership: How the Initiative-Freeing Radical Organizational Form Has Been Successfully Adopted

Despite great business results of initiative-freeing organizational forms in a number of companies since the late 1950s, most attempts to imitate them have failed. To find out how initiative-freeing forms can be successfully adopted, this research focused on the leadership style that supports such forms’ emergence. For this purpose, initiative-freeing forms have been narrowed to their radical variant - F-form, in which employees have complete freedom and responsibility to take actions that they decide are best. Next, potential F-Form companies were located in the U.S. and Europe and eighteen of them were directly studied along with their leaders who were instrumental in building these companies’ organizational forms. The key aspects of leadership style - which we call liberating - that were revealed as supporting the F-form adoption are: using the needs for intrinsic equality, growth and self-direction as design criteria, sharing a world-class vision, and becoming a culture-keeper. In addition, several prominent leadership traits were revealed, namely: the values of freedom and responsibility, creativity, and wisdom. Liberating leadership supports the adoption of F-form that combines the common good - great economic performance - with the personal good of employees - often called happiness.

The influence of heuristics on psychological science : A case study of research on creativity

Research heuristics--implicit rules used to guide work on a scientific problem-are explored for their role in guiding psychological research. Work on the psychology of creativity is used to illustrate how heuristics have guided research. We examine the influence of three heuristics: the trilogy-of-mind heuristic, the emotions-as-moods heuristic, and the analysis-of-variance heuristic. This analysis of multiple heuristics provides a new way to understand the state of research on creativity. In the discussion, the analysis is extended to other heuristics and to how heuristics may help as well as hinder innovative research.

1960s’ Lessons Learned: Liberating Leadership and Transformational Scholarship

Our within firm research on Freedom-form companies and on the leaders who builtthem illustrates how such work and its results sharing with managers can leadto mutually beneficial collaborative networks between scholars and CEOs. Ourresearch’s intellectual roots extend to the 1960s’ work of McGregor, Argyris, and Likertwho believed in collaboration between scholars and executives to facilitate theadoption of their organizational approaches. We have initiated a similar collaborationand illustrate it in this article. We conclude by reflecting on how our exposure to the pioneering organizational scholarship of the 1960s led to our engagement intransformational scholarship (Oliver, 2010).