What We're Reading: Is Innovation Fueled by Conflict or Cooperation?

Nick Bilton of The New York Times strongly suggests that comfort and wealth are inimical to innovation. He points out that while Google and Facebook are well ensconced in sumptuous surroundings, much of the entrepreneurial activity in high tech is happening outside their sphere, in the rough-and-tumble world of mobile communications. He cites the acquisition of Instagram as evidence that Facebook is losing its edge.

Granted, Wi-Fi-equipped shuttle buses, free meals, on-campus gyms, day care, massages, and heated toilet seats — yes — may have a lulling effect on the mind. But a couple of academic studies suggest an alternative view — that in certain contexts, at least, innovation thrives in comfortable, calm, conflict-free zones.

For instance, I noticed a fascinating paper (PDF) in the American Review of Public Administration that looks at the consequences of conflict and cooperation in, of all contexts, U.S. municipal governments.

A study (PDF) of 490 municipalities by Kimberly L. Nelson of Northern Illinois University and James H. Svara of Arizona State shows that city governments managed through an executive administrator give rise to greater numbers of innovations — such as customer-focused services and on-line functions — than those headed by a mayor who retains executive powers and a city council that exercises legislative authority. The reason is that the administrator-run municipal governments are marked by lower levels of conflict and higher levels of cooperation than their traditional mayor-dominated counterparts. In other words, creative conflict is no more productive in these settings than it is in the federal government, and we all know how innovative the federal government is.

That study brought to mind a short but very insightful piece in the March 2012 issue of HBR by Ella Miron-Spektor, Miriam Erez, and Eitan Naveh of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. In a study of 41 radical-innovation teams in a large defense contractor, they found that inclusion of conformists makes teams more innovative. In fact, conformists constituted 10% to 20% of the most innovative teams in the study. The reason: Conformists support highly creative team members — and boost cooperation.

The ultimate conflict-free work environment, I suppose, is solitude. Hari Pulakkat writes in a recent Times of India blog post that there's a growing chorus of voices citing the innovative value of working solo. He mentions a New York Times piece in which Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, argues against open work spaces and suggests that solitude can be a catalyst for innovation.

But of course solitude isn't really without conflict. When we work solo, we're simply using solitude to focus our energies on a problem that we're trying to understand. In other words, we're trying to resolve a conflict that we've imported into our solitude.

Maybe the way to look at it is that conflict is the irritant that gives rise to the need for innovation, but cooperation — or, for some people, solitude — is the best route to dealing with the irritant.

 

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