Practice Set 10 Test 1 (C10T1) | The Psychology Of Innovation

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The psychology of innovation

Why are so few companies truly innovative?

taking pride inInnovationrevolutioniseinstinctivelysự đổi mới, sự sáng tạo is key to business survival, and companies put substantial resources into inspiring employees to develop new ideas. There are, nevertheless, people working in sang trọng; xa hoa, state-of-the-art centres designed to stimulate innovation who find that their environment doesn’t make them feel at all creative. And there are those who don’t have a budget, or much space, but who innovate successfully.

For Robert B. Ciaidini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, one reason that companies don’t succeed as often as they should is that innovation starts with sự tuyển dụng. Research shows that the fit between an employee’s values and a company’s values makes a difference to what sự đóng góp they make and whether, two years after they join, they’re still at the company. Studies at Harvard Business School show that, although some individuals may be more creative than others, almost every individual can be creative in the right thời điểm, hoàn cảnh.

One of the most famous photographs in the story of rock’n’roll emphasises Ciaidini’s views. The 1956 picture of singers Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis jamming at a piano in Sun Studios in Memphis tells a hidden story. Sun’s ‘million-dollar quartet’ could have been a quintet. Missing from the picture is Roy Orbison, a greater natural singer than Lewis, Perkins or Cash. Sam Phillips, who owned Sun, wanted to revolutioniseinstinctivelyseizedriverscách mạng hóa popular music with songs that fused black and white music, and country and blues. Presley, Cash, Perkins and Lewis bằng bản năng understood Phillips’s ambition and believed in it. Orbison wasn’t inspired by the goal, and only ever achieved one hit with the Sun label.

The value fit matters, says Ciaidini, because innovation is, in part, a process of change, and under that pressure we, as a species, behave differently, ‘When things change, we are hard-wiredinterchangefeedbackleadershipbẩm sinh to play it safe.’ Managers should therefore conflictingadoptpervasiveinterchangelàm theo an approach that appears counterintuitive -they should explain what stands to be lost if the company fails to seize a particular opportunity. Studies show that we invariablygiving creditaccomplishmentstimulatelúc nào cũng take more gambles when threatened with a loss than when offered a reward.

Managing innovation is a delicate art. It’s easy for a company to be pulled in đối lập, trái chiều directions as the marketing, product development, and finance departments each get different feedback from different sets of people. And without a system which ensures có tính chất cộng tác, kết hợp exchanges within the company, it’s also easy for small ‘pockets of innovation’ to disappear. Innovation is a contact sport. You can’t brief people just by saying, ‘We’re going in this direction and I’m going to take you with me.’

Ciaidini believes that this ‘follow-the-leader syndrome, is dangerous, not least because it encourages bosses to go it alone. ‘It’s been scientifically proven that three people will be better than one at solving problems, even if that one person is the smartest person in the field.’ To prove his point, Ciaidini cites an interview with molecular biologist James Watson. Watson, together with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA, the genetic information carrier of all living organisms. ‘When asked how they had cracked the code ahead of an array of highly accomplished rival investigators, he said something that stunned me. He said he and Crick had succeeded because they were aware that they weren’t the most intelligent of the scientists pursuing the answer. The smartest scientist was called Rosalind Franklin who, Watson said, “was so intelligent she rarely sought advice”.’

Teamwork taps intostimulatesimultaneouslycounterintuitivetận dụng/khai thác one of the basic drivers of human behaviour. ‘The assurestate-of-the-artstimulateprinciplenguyên lý, nguyên tắc of social proof is so pervasive that we don’t even recognise it,’ says Ciaidini. ‘If your project is being resisted, for example, by a group of feedbackstimulatecultureveterankỳ cựu employees, ask another old-timer to speak up for it.’ Ciaidini is not alone in stimulateseizecultureadvocatingủng hộ this strategy. Research shows that peer power, used horizontally not vertically, is much more powerful than any boss’s speech.

Writing, visualising and prototyping can stimulate the flow of new ideas. Ciaidini cites scores of research papers and historical events that prove that even something as simple as writing deepens every individual’s taking pride instate-of-the-artseizeengagementsự tham gia in the project. It is, he says, the reason why all those competitions on breakfast cereal packets encouraged us to write in saying, in no more than 10 words: ‘I like Kellogg’s Corn Flakes because… .’ The very act of writing makes us more likely to believe it.

Authority doesn’t have to inhibit innovation but it often does. The wrong kind of leadership will lead to what Ciaidini calls ‘captainitis, the regrettable xu hướng of team members to opt out of team responsibilities that are properly theirs’. He calls it captainitis because, he says, ‘crew members of multipilot aircraft exhibit a sometimes deadly passivity when the flight captain makes a clearly wrong-headed decision’. This behaviour is not, he says, unique to air travel, but can happen in any workplace where the leader is overbearingfeedbackdriversplay it safehống hách, độc đoán.

At the other end of the scale is the 1980s Memphis design collective, a group of young designers for whom ‘the only rule was that there were no rule’. This environment encouraged a free inspiringcounterintuitiveinterchangeaccomplishmenttrao đổi of ideas, which led to more creativity with form, function, colour and materials that revolutionised attitudes to furniture design.

Many theorists believe the ideal boss should lead from behind, taking pride in collective seizeaccomplishmentsimultaneouslyplay it safethành tích, thành tựu and giving credit where it is due. Ciaidini says: ‘Leaders should encourage everyone to contribute and take more gamblesstate-of-the-artsimultaneouslygiving creditđồng thời assure all concerned that every recommendation is important to making the right decision and will be given full attention.’ The frustrating thing about innovation is that there are many approaches, but no magic formula. However, a manager who wants to create a truly innovative inspiringpervasiveculturestimulatevăn hóa can make their job a lot easier by recognising these psychological realities.