Creative Abrasion

"Surprise me," the CEO said to John, who had just assumed the newly created title of Director of Business Development. "You can hire six new people. Get some young blood in here and find us some new products—ones we can bring to market in, say, three or four years. Let's see what possibilities a creative group of people can identify in eighteen months." John was thrilled; what an opportunity at age thirty-four! He recruited three of the best financially minded, calculator-wielding MBAs he could find and set them to work sifting through the hundreds of possibilities in the research pipeline. With three job openings left, he pawed through dozens of impressive resumes before selecting three highly qualified young engineers. Eighteen months passed in a whirl of financial and technical analyses. To John's delight, the group members worked well together and became good friends. However, at the end, John was the one surprised—and out of a job. The group had rejected every idea in the pipeline on the basis of either financial or technical unfeasibility; they had identified not a single new idea worth pursuing. As John moved on to a different company, he was baffled: How could such a smart, well-qualified bunch of people have failed?