• Reinforced. The organization must reward search andreduce the cost of acquiring information. The easier theaccess to consultants and experts, the greater the rewardsfor "idea men," the greater the likelihood that the searchwill be continued.• Free of continuous evaluation. Continuous evaluationcan divert the search to a mere quest for data to bolstersolutions already proposed, and may discourage other mem-bers of the organization from getting involved in the search.• Free as possible of time limits. Search tends to be cur-tailed when there are time pressures and, I suspect, is lessefficient when faced with deadlines.• Conducted by a large number of people of diverse train-ing and background. Informal problem solving should bewide-spread throughout the organization, rather than re-stricted to a formal planning section.

If a novel solution is clearly better than other solutions,it will most likely be accepted. But novel responses aredifficult to evaluate; it is not always clear which alterna-tive is "clearly better." In that case organizations tend toaccept alternatives that fit in with their preferred ways ofdoing things.

An organization that prefers "high variance bets" is morelikely to accept a novel alternative than one that prefers"low variance bets." Novel responses have a wide rangeof possible payoffs; they will lead either to a killing or toa heavy loss. An organization that commits its resources tosuch a venture is making a high variance bet. Organiza-tions, like individuals, probably vary in their preferencefor high or low variance bets.

The outcome of a novel response is highly uncertain.Organizations that have a greater tolerance for uncertaintyare more likely to choose novel solutions.

... ON INNOV AnON

Novel solutions, since they usually involve different waysof using resources, threaten vested interests in the organi-zation. The parts of the organization that are threatened re-sist the acceptance of new ideas. Involvement in the searchfor new solutions seems to decrease this resistance, so thatnovel solutions are more likely to bechosen when very widesegments of the organization are committed to the search.

Harold J. Leavitt, professor of industrial administrationand psychology at Carnegie Institute of Technology, hassome experimental results that lead to unusual conclusionsabout the role of scientists in innovation.

Ignoranc~ Suaess. and InnovationHAROLD J. LEAVITT

Ordinarily in organizations we associate creativity with ahigh degree of education-the scientist. But the scientistwe are thinking about is the Ph.D. scientist, highly trainedby other Ph.D. scientists, and working within some agreed-upon bounds-agreed upon not only by others in his ownfield, but by the whole world of Ph.Di's in science. Onewonders about the extent to which our shared educationalprocesses, even at high levels, restrict search to those seg-ments of the world accepted and prominently visible to theeducated group.

We have recently come across an intriguing finding as aresult of work on the common-target game. The common-target game is played with three or more participants, eachblindfolded, each asked to hold up some number of fingersfrom zero to ten. The instructor calls out some whole nurn-

If a novel solution is clearly better than other solutions, it willmost like!y be accepted. But nove! responses are difficult to evalu-ate; it is not always clear which alternative is "clearly better." In

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that case organizations tend to accept alternatives that fit in withtheir preferred ways of doing things.

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ber between zero and ten times the number of players.Each player is asked to hold up fingers such that the totalof the whole group will add up to that target. Feedback ofresults can be varied, but usually the instructor says, "Yourtarget was 25, you actually hit 23 with two eights and aseven." Subjects then try again for the target until they hitit; they are given a series of targets until they hit somecriterion of proficiency.

Most of the subjects in our game have been undergrad-uate male students. Most of the time they organize rathereffectively around a satisfactory and perfectly completesolution to the problem. But recently we have found thatfemale fine arts and female high school srudents-s-althoughthey usually organize much more sloppily, and are muchless able to tell you what they are doing-s-are more likelyto come up with a novel and probably better solution.

Most "analytically" trained subjects, like engineeringstudents or mathematicians, tend to get organized quickly.They organize around a solution that involves the divisionof the target number by the number of subjects with sub-allocation of residuals among members. That is, if the tar-get is 15, and there are three players, each takes five. If it's16, two take 5 and one takes 6.

An alternative solution, which is simpler and more gen-eral, is seldom discovered by these players. This alternativesolution involves the first man taking all whole targets upto and including 10, and then holding 10 beyond that. Thesecond subject holds zeros until targets are over 10, andthen takes anything within the second decile, and so on.This "peeling off" system, involving little arithmetic andfewer programmatic steps, seems to be discovered more fre-quently by women than men, and more frequently in situa-tions where people are instructed to plan the game so thatothers can play it rather than to plan for themselves.

If one examines the process that the girls use that even-tually leads them to discover the tens system, it tends to beessentially different from the direct, logical, divide-by-threesolution used by boys. The boys generally start with ananalysis of the task. They look at the target first, break it upinto appropriate sized pieces, and then allocate the piecesto the persons. The stages in the process are these: (1 )division of the target; (2) development of the scheme ofallocation of residuals, and (3) assignment of persons tothose residual roles.

The girls seem to operate in the opposite direction. Theystart by working out relationships with one another, withthe target in a fuzzy, secondary, almost irrelevant role.They decide who will be group leader and who will re-spond to whom or adjust to whom. They ignore the targetto concentrate on developing a local social system. If theymiss the first time, they adjust to one another so they canhit the second time. Somehow, by a process I certainly don'tunderstand, this activity eventually permits many of themto come up with this "peeling off by tens" solution.

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We do not yet know why the girls behave this way. Onehypothesis is that it is not because they are girls, but be-cause they are mathematically undisciplined and ignorant.They are number-scared. They tend to look unhappy andmake unpleasant cracks when they discover that they are ina numbers game. If this hypothesis is true, we would thenhave a situation where men, commonly trained and com-petent in dealing with numbers, take the prominent andcommonly agreed upon path-s-immediare analysis of thetarget and division of it into parts. This apparently sensibledirection of movement is also restrictive, limiting searchto only one segment of the total range of possibilities. Thegirls, naive and number-ignorant, work on the relationshipsto one another and eventually end up searching the en-vironment in areas not searched by the locked-step edu-cated men.

Donald C. Pelz, program director of the Survey ResearchCenter of the University of Michigan, is currently workingon analyses of scientific organization with Frank Andrews,He uses this experience to generalize about innovation, withthe caution that he may be inclined to identify all scientificoutput with innovation.

Conditions for InnovationDONALD c. PELZ

One growing conviction, supported by several bits of evi-dence, is that scientists don't create in a vacuum, but riseto the challenge of specific problems. Necessity, if not themother of invention, is at least one of its progenitors. Oneeffective function of the organization's leadership, there-fore, can be to insure that scientists are brought face to faceperiodically with intriguing and important new problems.

One of our tentative findings so far is that scientistshaving high autonomy are not necessarily the most pro-ductive. Rather, the optimal condition seems to be one inwhich the scientist has considerable influence on the direc-tion of his own technical work, but at the same time exposeshimself to the ideas of several other decision-makers con-cerning choice of his technical goals (such as colleagues,immediate chief, higher executive levels, or outside clientsor sponsors) ,

Confronting the scientist with problems is not done byfiat or arbitrary assignment, A number of better mecha-nisms are available-a problem-oriented bull session, off-the-record conferences, small meetings involving (a) thescientist himself, (b) his immediate supervisor, (c) a. po-

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