Linda A. Hill

Everyone has a slice of genius, says leadership expert and Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, Ph.D. And when you gather a cross-section of great minds together to innovate, problem-solve and identify new opportunities, great things happen. Hill calls this human resource “collective genius.” Drawing on principles from her award-winning book of the same name, Hill teaches leaders at all levels of management how they can fuel the innovation process by building and leveraging diversity of thought.

Without a group of diverse thinkers, an organization can go stale from a lack of new ideas and perspectives. Worse, it can end up overlooking key audiences, which ultimately leads to missed opportunities. According to Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, Ph.D., one of the world’s top leadership and innovation experts, the long-term growth of an organization depends on diversity of thought. Leaders who share the process of innovating with people of different disciplines, backgrounds, cultures and experiences will get the highest return on that investment on many fronts. Drawing on principles from her award-winning book, Collective Genius, Hill teachers leaders how to build a culture of diversity and inclusion into their business models to amplify collective genius, deepen their DEI efforts and evolve their cultural competence. Increased growth and positive brand recognition are just a few of the dividends.

Leadership is about setting forth a vision. But how can you set up a vision if you can’t see? Harvard Business School professor Linda A. Hill, one of the world’s top experts on leadership and innovation, says this is how many leaders feel while trying to operate in the aftermath of COVID-19. She says instead of rethinking plans, leaders need to rethink the way they innovate. “You cannot plan your way out uncertainty,” said Hill in an interview. “You need to act your way out of it. Act, learn as quickly as you can, then adapt. The process of acting, learning and adapting is not the same as planning.” During keynotes, workshops and advisory roles, Hill teaches organizations how to innovate differently through diversity of thinking and experimentation so they can act and learn with speed and purpose through disruption of any kind, especially when a crisis requires a new approach.

Amid relentless technological disruption, global uncertainty and shifting customer and employee expectations, most leaders know continuous innovation is essential. But few know how to switch from generating bold ideas to scaling them across complex systems and industries. According to Harvard Business School professor Linda A. Hill, one of the world’s foremost experts on leadership and innovation, the answer is clear: innovation isn’t a solo act, but a collective one. Drawing on her latest book, Genius at Scale, as well as a decade of global research with co-authors Emily Tedards and Jason Wild, Hill introduces three critical roles that enable leaders to turn ideas into impact. The Architect builds cultures and systems for co-creation; the Bridger builds robust partnerships across organizational boundaries; and the Catalyst sparks movements of multiparty collaborations across ecosystems. Hill demonstrates how to leverage each to drive continuous innovation. Through longitudinal case studies spanning industries from technology and entertainment to healthcare to government, Hill shows how leaders can harness digital tools, data and cross-sector collaboration to generate and scale innovative solutions. Leaders leave this session equipped with actionable frameworks and a renewed understanding of how to build environments where innovation becomes everyone’s job and co-creation thrives.

How and why you lead directly correlates with your effectiveness level, says Harvard Business School’s Linda Hill, Ph.D., one of the world’s top leadership and innovation experts. Effective managers do not seek to serve themselves and their egos. Their role is to help others accomplish something worthwhile. They know that formal authority is a two-way street and they exert their authority thoughtfully. Based on her acclaimed book, Being the Boss, co-authored with Ken Lineback, Hill teaches participants the “three imperatives for becoming a great leader” and outlines tools they can use to create a more productive and innovative organization while avoiding the pitfalls that can lead to burnout or outright failure. Leaders at every level of an organization, from C-suite executives to first time managers, will greatly benefit from this presentation.