In our experience, innovation teams feel a hostility toward the people responsible for day-to-day operations. The rich vocabulary of disdain includes bureaucratic, robotic, rigid, ossified, staid, dull, decaying, controlling, patronizing and just plain old. Such animosity explains why most executives believe that any significant innova-tion initiative requires a team that is separate and isolated from the rest of the company.

It is flat wrong. Isolation may neutralize infighting, but it a so neuters innovation.

The reality is that an innovation initiative must be executed by a partnership that somehow bridges the hostilities-a partnership between a dedicated what we call the performance engine, the unit resp for sustaining excellence in ongoing operations, such an arrangement seems, at first glance, impro But to give up on it is to give up on innovation it:

For Discussion:

Why does the diversity of errc: .-r educational backgrounds, technical or profess : : fields, and job specializations inevitably lead tc c in organizations? How can management get these diverse employees to team up, engage in cooi conflict, and collaborate effectively?