Good point, most business books just recycle the same old information in a new format hoping for some more sales. They are the opposite of Kennan's observation about information. History books, on the other hand, are organized chronologically usually which helps with the guidance of information.

Two years ago I would have never dreamed of contributing to a business blog. Then I spent time researching creative thinking and how to teach more effectively in my theater department and it completely changed my perspective. I have come to appreciate how much richer my ideas have become by opening up my experiences beyond the my department.

Personally, I agree with Andy Boynton. Great ideas arrive by connecting dots of information that can be acquired all around us. We need to learn to become keen observers and take time to talk to people, even those we don't expect to spark ideas for us. I believe we have become too specialized in modern times and we need to stop confining our discussions to those within our own fields of expertise. Without expanding our horizons we are fated to repackage the same old ideas.

Discovering new ideas is also far more than finding a rich source. We may reveal what we already know by ridding ourselves of creative blocks. The psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, lists the five creative blocks as preconceived notions, fears, judgment or destructive criticism, distractions and unclear goals. Overall I find my most creative ideas come from my ability to observe without the imposition of these creative blocks and allowing myself to entertain even the most absurd ideas from time to time.

I think there's something misleading about the way this is framed. Andy points to the book as the source of "the best ideas about professional excellence and trusting, collaborative teamwork I’ve seen in a long time.” Note: he already has a management perspective embedded in his looking---he's found examples of 'professional excellence and trusting, collaborative teamwork'. Examples are just that: items to fit into a pre-existing intellectual framework. They aren't ideas-in-themselves.
I think that many "management ideas" are ideas stretched, transplanted or analogized from other disciplines. That's not a knock on "management ideas" since so much of human knowing is analogical.

There is a certain irony here. Andy is dean of a business school that bases its promotion decisions to a considerable degree on how much its faculty publish in highly reputable scholarly journals. However, scholarly articles don't show up in this article at all, just as they don't usually show up on bookshelves in stores.

There actually are some great ideas in scholarly journals. At least there better be, or academia is pretty much of a fraud. The ideas are just not quite as accessible to most readers (to put it mildly).

Often with breakthrough ideas - it is not the ideas themselves that "breakthrough" - but the rhetorical packaging - the metaphors and other tropes. I always liked the idea of going fishing - putting "lines of thought" out there in the deep blue, then see what comes up. Imagine yourself bobbing up and down in a dingy off the coast somewhere, then throwing out lines. Then sit back and wait for the bite. The line of thought, and the "ideas" as bait will catch something for sure, even it is only rock. But as you lay back pondering, you will improve your chances by pulling the line in and adding something else. Over time, you might do with just some sprats, (they can add up!), or on the horizon you might catch the whopper. What is wonderful about this form of visualisation is that it can be done anywhere and it is pleasurable, as we know from real fishing, most of the pleasure is just being there. So go now and put out 5 lines --

All these posts have given me pause to reflect. I offer the following observations:

1. I love Stephen Pain's fishing analogy. Not only because I love fishing (the real thing!), but because my mind works much like his does--one needs to parallel process searching for ideas--many lines in the water; trolling through strong tie and weak tie networks, scanning, reading--and then a nibble or big hit--but it has to be purposeful -- I think one needs to know the broad topics of interest to give ideas any meaningful context, or it is all noise out there.

2. I agree with Richard Keeley in that without that some preexisting framework or context, then for me what I read can't trigger any insights. I am interested in high performing teams, leadership, and creating great organizations--with that context--I'm searching constantly for the next "ah ha!".

3. Finally, Jean Bartunek is spot on. In fact in my discussion with Bronwyn Fryer that led to her blog, I suggested earlier during our lunch that HBR build a network of great academics who write in places like the "academy of management journal" or "administrative science quarterly"--two superb academic journals--and I think those places have great ideas. But the transformation from those sources to managerial consumption (HBR) would take some thought and work (by an astute editor like Bronwyn-it would very doable); but I think the effort would be worth it -- to connect great academics and their ideas to the world of practice. I straddle the world of practice and academia and I am always finding interesting and important (to managers) concepts and insights in those traditional academic sources; however the translation and imaginative leap is needed.

Andy Boynton

Andy

Thanks to all of you for comments! I was especially happy to see the post from Crystal, who comes to the business world from a different arena. In fact, we at HBR try hard to bring the perspectives from people outside the business (including the business academic) realm -- that's why, every other month, we run a department called "Different Voice" in which we editors interview people like chefs, dancers, hostage negotiators and, yes, historians. (Apropos, on the topic of the importance of historical literacy, see my interview with David McCullough in our March issue, entitled "Timeless Leadership.")

Personally, I'm increasingly convinced that the best emerging ideas come from combining -- even smashing together-- various disciplines. (My own background is in comparative literature, and in graduate school I combined the study of literatures in multiple languages with other disciplines (sociology, psychology, gender studies, music, visual arts, theater.) One very current example is the new field of behavioral economics, which combines behavioral psychology with economics to reveal insights into human decision making and behavior, with important implications for marketing and management. (Dan Ariely's new book, Predictably Irrational" is all about this.) Studies in neuroscience are increasingly being applied to thinking about human motivation, and so on. The most interesting new stuff seems to be coming from this kind of cross-breeding.

Finally, just for the record -- HBR receives literally thousands of proposals from business academics each year, only a relative handful of which we publish. Despite the fact that we read every single proposal, and also spend time scouring the journals and our editors attend the annual Academy of Management conference, our experience is that the bulk of work by business academics lacks the combination of insight and applicability our practitioner audience looks to us for. But we will always keep looking, and we hope our prospective contributors will always keep trying. Given the increasing challenges facing leaders in general, our readers need as many good new ideas as we can possibly find for them.

Reading the title of this blog I was at first very hesitant to comment. I'm sometimes mystified by where the great ideas come from, though, thanks to Andy, I know history is a fantastic source.

Through experience and working with Andy in the past I've learned that having a framework, some knowledge and a purpose is a foundation for finding those great ideas, but without conversations I don't believe mere mortals like me can ever have a great idea.

If I'm unwilling to risk looking like a fool in order to talk with those with experience and/or knowledge and/or a different perspective, I don't get new, great ideas. Perhaps that's just me, but I suspect this applies to many others.

Although I think there are "good ideas" in traditional management journals, institutional pressures and norms conspire against "big ideas" appearing in those outlets. Big ideas generally require more room for development and illustration than journal articles allow. They also place much more emphasis on being "accurate" than provocative. Even though history books are often the source of great examples for me ("Team of Rivals" being just one recent example), history *journal* articles are no more valuable as sources of great (or even good) ideas than management journal articles.

Books like Ideas that Stick, Predictably Irrational, Freakonomics, and Blink demonstrate quite clearly that the general public and business readers both have a strong taste for solid social science research when it is packaged effectively. The recent success of social science-oriented columns and blogs in the NYT (see columns by Tara Parker Pope, John Tierney, etc. at http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/psychology/ and http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/psychology_and_psychologists/index.html) are further evidence of the market for interesting ideas when they are presented in a way that is accessible and intriguing to the general reader. The "great ideas" in the books by Heath, Ariely, Leavitt, and Gladwell would not have been possible without the strong underlying streams of basic research by people like Cialdini, Kahneman, Tversky, Bazerman, Benaji, and countless others who have significantly advanced our understanding of persuasion, decision making, information processing, etc. Ariely is a rare business academic who has contributed significantly in traditional outlets (see his many academic articles) and now in a "hit" book.

Bronwyn's points about the best ideas coming from a disciplinary mosh pit are quiet right -- and the natural sciences have been doing this with interdisciplinary grants, research institutes, etc. for years. Unfortunately, the social and management/organizational sciences have been slower to catch on. Nonetheless, some of the best selling books are successful (in my opinion) precisely because their authors range widely over multiple disciplines to make their points.

Absent major changes in the traditional academic outlets (and academic incentive/reward structures), I believe that the best way to incubate and diffuse potentially great ideas is to foster more co-authorship between social scientists doing great basic work and journalists/writers who can help with the translation and packaging of that great research (a la the partnership between Dubner and Levitt on Freakonomics). Such authorial partnerships require a very different skill than traditional ghost-writers or the average academics possess. On the journalistic end, people like Gladwell and Dubner have been successful because they have the stamina to wade through, make sense of, and find gold nuggets in academic research. On the academic end, people like Levitt and Ariely are successful because they are top notch in traditional academic terms but also possess a rarer ability to pose intriguing, meaningful questions and then figure out creative ways to answer them.

This is a stimulating and important discussion, and I've got an angle on it that takes off from Andy Boynton's comments on Isaacson's and Thomas's The Wise Men, which is that what made them wiser and better together than they were as individuals was not simply the honesty and respect they exhibited toward one another, but the fact that each of them was profoundly knowledgeable about something, whether war, history, diplomacy, law or finance. And while they would never achieve—and knew they'd never achieve—similar expertise in other matters—they knew from hardwon experience how to be expert, by which I mean they knew how to scan the tree and sort the rotten from the ripe and not waste time harvesting what should have been let fall—and what kind of fruit it was didn't particularly matter because the principle was the same. They could therefore help each other think out all sorts of problems and push each other to find the better solutions. Strangely, Truman—sitting at the head of the table—is the one who doesn't seem to have had the deep knowledge of something, unless it was the Kansas City system of political hackery or running a men's hat and garters shop. But given who he surrounded himself with in the White House—itself a manifestation of a particular and uncommon wisdom—maybe what he did know was enough.

I think that we may be doing ourselves a disservice by using a category "non-business books" that is in itself misleading. Afterall, aren't books like "Team of Rivals" or "The Wise Men," all about talented and ambitious people, in executive positions in complex organizations, trying to move those organizations in such a way that they make a difference? How much does that really differ from the examples that are used to illustrate "business books"? [other than being often more interesting]

Similarly, shouldn't we consider it strange when those managers interested in highly-technical, highly-succesful, projects don't seek-out lessons from the Miles Davis' bands, or the Bernstein-Robbins collaboration on West Side Story, that changed Broadway? Weren't such teams all about taking talented people and launching revolutions in product offerings and organizational approaches in the industries of which they were a part? Isn't this exactly what our business colleagues are also trying to do? Why can't we make this point more effectively?

Andy is right in suggesting that lessons in leadership and management are richly abundant in many fields. The particular value of "non-business" books is that, besides being typically better written, they tend to be more vivid in description, and more transparent in the telling. What drives me crazy, however, is when our participants say that they are "not real business." The fact is, that they are powerful learning vehicles, that are much more engaging and often informative than the traditional books in this genre.