Ideas are everywhere. Chapter 6 explored some of the basics of creative thinking, but the life of ideas is bigger than what happens in brainstorming meetings. The best idea-finding sessions in the world are useless if that creative energy doesn't go anywhere. Ideas don't do much—it's what's done with them that matters. Are they funded? Encouraged? Used to reinvent and rethink? Given time to grow? Rewarded with cash prizes or trips to Hawaii? Are people pushed to explore, prototype, follow their instincts, and learn from what happens?

Teams with healthy idea life cycles are easy to spot: ideas flow between people easily and in large volumes. Conversations are vibrant with questions and suggestions, prototypes and demos happen regularly, and people commit to finding and fighting for good ideas. Often, this is fun; people are happy to learn from failures, debates, and bizarre ideas. Teams that innovate are great places for ideas to live—like happy pets, they're treated well, get lots of attention, and are shared among people who care deeply about them.

The life of ideas is the responsibility of whoever is in charge. He defines it by his responses and behavior, especially when he's challenged by someone else's ideas. For example, if someone asks, "Hey boss, can we have status meetings over lunch to save time?" and the boss replies, "Say something that stupid again and you're fired," no one will ask similar questions. All ideas about improving the status meeting, and perhaps improving anything, are dead forevermore. Or, more typically, if no ideas from anyone other than the manager are ever chosen, people will eventually stop proposing suggestions.

Teams with scorched deserts where creative jungles should be usually have a manager to blame. The boss must attend to the life of ideas for all the people he works with, investing time and money to nurture their young ideas, granting room for them to breathe, and supporting the ideas' development, delivery, and recycling (to make way for new ones).

Alan Kay, a member of the legendary group at Xerox PARC, said this about his manager, Bob Taylor: "His attitude kept it safe for others to put aside fears and ego and concentrate objectively on the problem at hand." ^[121] According to many accounts, Taylor encouraged a free discourse of ideas, including open criticism and debate, in a weekly meeting in a room filled with beanbag chairs. The goal wasn't to roast each other, but to push, prod, cajole, share, inspire, and enrage as needed to give life to everyone's best ideas. ^[122] The environment put innovation at the center, with politics, posturing, and hierarchy on the perimeter. This can go as far as office architecture because people's ability to feel creative and share ideas is heavily influenced by how their offices, shared spaces, and buildings are designed.

Tom Kelly, general manager of IDEO and author of The Art of Innovation, ^[123] explains:

Lewis Thomas, author of Lives of a Cell ^[124] and former dean of the Yale Medical School, wrote:

That laughter, in part, means people are comfortable with and unafraid of new ideas. The Nerf toys, open architecture, and fun vibe at Google's headquarters (see Chapter 1) aren't gimmicks; the environment is supportive of ideas and collaboration, which helps innovations move through the organization.

Hiring and team structure may define the working environment more than other factors combined. Taylor hired with innovation in mind, recruiting people who naturally challenged the status quo and were self-driven pursuers of their imaginations. He wanted people who thrived on the uncertainties of doing new things, who could drive ideas forward. Taylor viewed his management role not as a grand creator or assembly-line foreman, but as an enabler of other people's ideas. And it worked—his team developed the laser printer, Ethernet, object-oriented computing, and the graphical user interface (GUI). Good managers of innovation recognize that they are in primary control over the environment, and it's up to them to create a place for talented people to do their best work.

One thing a genius can't do that his manger can is provide cover fire. Whether through power, inspiration, or charisma, managers have the singular burden of protecting their teams. Innovations always threaten someone in power, and executives in search of budget cuts frequently target them first. The manager's unique role is to use whatever means necessary to shield innovation while it's too young to defend itself in the open. Steve Jobs took the Macintosh project into a separate building at Apple headquarters, sequestering it from the rest of the company. The first laptop at Toshiba was rejected by corporate leaders, and Tetsuya Mizoguchi, the team leader, fought to keep the project alive until he won executive support; three years later, the product had 38% of the market. ^[125] Any story of breakthrough work has someone acting as a shield, defending innovation while it's happening.

One of Thomas Edison's secret weapons was his star persona. His ego may have been large, but he used his stardom as a shield for his research lab: his true engine of innovation. His team of bright minds—a dozen inventors in Menlo Park, New Jersey—worked happily in relative anonymity, free from public scrutiny or the stresses of appearances and interviews. Many major insights of developing the electric light and the phonograph are attributed to his staff, not to Edison himself. Edison took the heat for ideas that failed, and by making himself an easy target for investors and the public, he protected his team from all kinds of negative influences. ^[126]

All innovations run on political capital: the lifeline of budget and staff comes from somewhere, and everyone (including the project leader) is in competition for those limited resources. Even famed start-up companies that began in garages had to be defended from frustrated spouses or sarcastic teenagers who wanted those resources for more traditional purposes (families are as political as any organization). Life is a zero-sum game, and the resources for innovation must come at the expense of something else.

Successful innovators compare their ambitions to their capital. If a project needs more time, money, or political cover fire than its leader can provide, the effort will be discovered, lobotomized, or killed. For example, if the manager bets on promises for budget (or loans) that are withdrawn, or makes claims that he fails to deliver, the effort will die of starvation no matter how many great ideas, creative environments, or amazing talents it has. And if he's too conservative and doesn't take enough risks, the project might survive, but it will not be progressive enough to achieve its goals. It's a tightrope to walk—pushing a project hard enough without pushing it too far—but every successful innovator has done the same balancing act since the beginning of time.

Protecting innovation includes obtaining funding, finding allies, protecting teams from natural predators (defenders of status quo, jealous managers, the ever-resilient and contagious threat of organizational idiocy), and even buffering the team and its stars from their self-destructive tendencies. Sometimes protecting an innovative team will demand withholding information that might discourage the team (for example, a VP's napalm-laced feedback), testing the manager's judgment, boundaries, and willingness to make psychological sacrifices for the project. Managers can take larger bullets for the team than anyone else.

Ideas are abstractions. You can't get cash from the idea of an ATM machine, nor commute home on the notion of a hovercraft. To become an innovation, an idea has to blossom into whatever form necessary—a demo, a prototype, a product—to be useful to people. To shepherd an idea down the long, arduous path from conception to realization is known as execution. And despite its workman-like reputation in comparison to creative thought, executing on an idea is the hardest task faced by managers of innovation. In Chapter 6, we explored how easy ideas are to find; the challenge is doing all the work necessary to manifest them in the world. We know the names Edison, Wright, Wozniak, and Tesla not because they had grand ideas alone, but because they were able to execute on them before their competitors. Steve Jobs was right when he said, "Real artists ship," to rally the Macintosh team into putting in the long, exhausting, unglamorous hours needed to get the product out the door. ^[127]

Execution forces managers to deal with the countless details that were waved away during brainstorms and demos. All the challenges swept under the rug of "we'll deal with it later" or "that's not important now" become immovable roadblocks, demanding attention now; otherwise, progress stops. These sacrifices are often difficult for idealists to handle. Even though their passion is what convinced others to support their ideas, that passion must be tempered by compromises if those ideas are to make it to the world.

The challenge is making the right sacrifices at the right time in the right way: there is no formula for this, only the manager's and his team's judgment. Managers must balance the team on the edge of the ideals that drove the effort through early stages ("we will change the world!") and the necessary constraints of schedules and budgets to finish ("we must ship in four weeks, do or die"). Too much idealism, and the work never ships—not enough, and little change is brought to the world.

Innovation champions—like Jeff Hawkins (Palm), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Bob Taylor (Xerox PARC)—have often needed to put down their swords and egos to pitch their projects for all they're worth. Innovators never have all the cards, so they must ask others for help to make things happen: start-ups have investors; films have production companies; businesses take loans from banks. Earlier, we explored why people don't like new ideas, and the questions people with new ideas face. Well, this is true for managers, but the stakes are higher: they're not only responsible for their ideas, but also for the collective hopes of an entire team.

All innovation heroes survived the closing of doors in their faces: Carlson (Xerox), Jobs (Apple II), Page and Brin (Google), and Smith (FedEx). As persuasive as these greats might have been, they weren't convincing enough to prevent rejections. We imagine great persuaders as charismatic figures, dazzling and romancing the soon-to-be-convinced with special powers, but real innovators are not magicians. The difference between success and failure is most often relentlessness, not talent or charisma (though those help). Jobs explains, "I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance." ^[128] Persuasion is a skill; if sufficiently motivated, anyone can improve. ^[129]

Persuasion is needed to start a project, recruit top people, obtain resources, convince talent (or spouses) not to leave, as well as to compel investors or customers to buy once there is something to sell. Persuasion fuels innovation at all levels, and every successful innovation depends on getting people to believe in things that have not been done before.