By digging at a book author, Art Kleiner has unearthed a valuable insight as to why innovators can fail to thrive, even in an organization that prizes innovation and creativity. The book is How Breakthroughs Happen by Andrew Hargadon, and the interview is at strategy+business, where Kleiner writes a regular column.

Link: Recombinant Innovation.

Most creative people have two needs they must simultaneously satisfy: an obsessive focus on the problem at hand, no matter where it leads them; and the craving for respectability. Innovators have to show to the company and their peers that they are in control, with an enviable and error-free track record. It’s no wonder that, in trying to do all this, many innovators (and companies) get twisted up in knots. Professor Hargadon gets closest to this point when he writes that most successful innovative labs consciously try to reduce people’s exposure to the highly personal derision and rebuke that is common in innovation cultures.