Op/ed: Why Great Ideas Die on Managers’ Desks—and How to Save Them

Smart bosses are always looking for fresh, creative ideas from their employees, yet even accomplished managers can be impediments to innovation, two University of Maryland management experts write in a new article in MIT Sloan Management Review.

Ironically, their own deep expertise can cause them to struggle to recognize the value of novel ways of doing things, particularly when such ideas lack precedents within their field, write Vijaya Venkataramani, Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Innovation, and Kathryn M. Bartol, research professor and professor emerita, both from the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Take the famous case of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, which developed revolutionary technologies, such as the graphical user interface and the computer mouse—innovations that were poised to redefine the future of personal computing. However, Xerox’s leaders remained focused on their own expertise in photocopying and printing and failed to grasp the value of those breakthroughs. The ideas were seen as intriguing but impractical and unrelated to the company’s core business. This reluctance to embrace ideas beyond its traditional domain ultimately cost Xerox the chance to dominate the personal computing revolution—a market that others, like Apple, eagerly claimed.

Herein lies the paradox: The very novelty that makes an idea valuable to an organization and likely to generate extraordinary rewards is the same quality that makes it difficult for managers to appreciate an idea. Organizations thrive on the ability to disrupt norms and embrace the unfamiliar, yet managers’ mental models often favor the predictable and familiar. How can this critical dilemma be resolved?

Read the rest in MIT Sloan Management Review.