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, patron-izing . . . 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 also 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 team and what we call the performance engine, the unit responsible for sustaining excellence in ongoing operations. Granted, such an arrangement seems, at first glance, improbable. But to give up on it is to give up on innovation itself. For Discussion: Why does the diversity of employees’ educational backgrounds, technical or professional fields, and job specializations inevitably lead to conflict in organizations? How can management get these diverse employees to team up, engage in cooperative conflict, and collaborate effectively?