Abstract
In this chapter we begin to describe the specifics involved in creating an ecology of innovation in your organization or community. Thus far we have focused on the workings of complex systems, and we have shown how advances in complexity research over the last quarter century can inform one’s thinking about innovation and adaptation in organizations. In particular, we have pointed to the importance of a kind of leadership that enables change and adaptation in organizations, what we call generative leadership. Earlier chapters described how such conditions can and do encourage individuals throughout the organization to experiment with novel approaches, either in an effort to capitalize on opportunities or to solve problems. We also described how these simple ideas can, under the right conditions, extend and expand a wave of change that spreads across the entire organization. At the same time, we have insisted that these things don’t happen by themselves. Generative leadership is needed to create the conditions that enable success. In this chapter and in the next, we describe specific ways in which generative leadership enables in novation-led success even under difficult and challenging conditions.
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Notes
One of the authors of this book, Jeffrey Goldstein, had the good fortune of learning Positive Deviance while working as a co-consultant with Jerry and Monique Sternin in 2006. Much of the material on PD in this chapter is culled from the time Jeffrey spent with the Sternins on this project. The chapter is supplemented, however, from other sources containing information about PD as indicated in the endnotes. Sadly, Jerry Sternin passed away while this book was being written.
Saco, R. (2005). Good companies: Organizations discovering the good in themselves by using Positive Deviance as a change management strategy. MSc Dissertation, HEC Paris, Oxford Executive Education, Oxford University.
Dorsey, D. (2000). Positive Deviant—Jerry Sternin. Fast Company, December. Available at the Plexus Institute website: http://www.plexusinstitute.org/ideas/show_elibrary.cfm?id=270.
See the website devoted to PD: http://www.positivedeviance.org.
Mathews, R., & Wacker, W. (2002). The Deviant’s Advantage. New York: Random House, p. 240.
Dorsey, D. (2000). Positive Deviant—Jerry Sternin. Fast Company.
Ibid.
Vagelos, R., & Galambos, L. (2004). Medicine, science, and Merck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saco, R. (2005). Good companies.
Bertels, T., & Sternin, J. (2003). Replicating results and managing knowledge. In Rath and Strongs six sigma leadership handbook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 450–457.
Saco, R. (2005). Good companies, p. 19.
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© 2010 Jeffrey Goldstein, James K. Hazy, and Benyamin B. Lichtenstein
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Goldstein, J., Hazy, J.K., Lichtenstein, B.B. (2010). The Innovative Power of Positive Deviance. In: Complexity and the Nexus of Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107717_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107717_6
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