Innovation Success 360: Loose-Tight Leadership

  

 

Loose-tight leadership alternates the creation of space for idea generation with a deliberate tightening that selects and tests specific ideas for further development. Looseness usually dominates the early stages of the innovation process; in the later stages, tightening becomes more important to scrutinize the concepts and bring the selected ones to the market.  A balanced approach is essential to loose-tight leadership. Those who remain loose too long generate plenty of ideas but have difficulty commercializing them. Those who lock into the tight mode choke off all but most obvious ideas, thus confining innovation to incremental line extensions of existing products that add little value.

  

 

 

The Way Our Mind Works

You must divide time between the left-brain and right-brain activity to achieve better → creativity results. If you keep bouncing back and forth between creative and analytical activities, you'll get a headache and won't produce your best results. Analysis, evaluation and judgment get in the way of → creativity.

That's why in → brainstorming sessions we suspend judgment while we generate ideas. Similarly, radical innovation project managers apply the → Loose-Tight Leadership technique to divide time between divergent and convergent thinking by their team members at different → project stages... More