774: What Innovative Leaders Do Different, with Linda Hill

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Mar 16, 2026

Linda Hill, Harvard Business School leadership and innovation scholar and co-author of Genius at Scale, discusses how leaders create cultures and capabilities for collective innovation. She explains three innovation roles: Architects, Bridge Builders, and Catalysts. Conversations cover reframing horizontal relationships, scaling innovation across organizations, and leading through uncertainty with public learning.

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INSIGHT

Innovation Leadership Is Not The Same As Change Leadership

Leading innovation is different from leading change and requires building repeatable capabilities rather than just communicating a vision.
Hill's ethnographic studies show architects build social environments and culture so organizations can innovate again and again, not just follow a leader.

INSIGHT

Three Roles That Drive Innovation At Scale

Innovative leadership shows up in three roles: Architects who build culture, Bridge Builders who form external partnerships, and Catalysts who create ecosystem-wide movements.
Hill argues organizations need all three roles to access talent, tools, and multi-party collaboration at speed.

ADVICE

Use Purpose To Align People For Breakthrough Work

Prioritize purpose and culture over prescribing a fixed vision when aiming for breakthrough innovation.
Make work meaningful so people will take the risks required for novel solutions, using purpose as the alignment mechanism.

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Linda Hill: Genius at Scale

Linda Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School. Globally recognized as a top leadership and innovation expert, Linda has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top five management thinkers. She is the co-author, along with Emily Tedards and Jason Wild, of Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation (Amazon, Bookshop)*

We all want to think of ourselves as innovative, but it’s often not easy to know exactly what that means in practice. In this conversation, Linda and I explore what her research shows that leaders do to drive innovation successfully – and how each of us can get just a bit better.

Key Points

Rather than coming up with a vision and asking people to follow it, innovation is about creating the culture and capabilities to create the future together.
Innovation leadership shows up in three ways within organizations: the Architects, the Bridge Builders, and the Catalysts.
Instead of setting the stage for themselves, innovative leaders set the stage for others.
Often, we view horizontal relationships through the lens of organizational politics. The most effective innovation leaders view these relationships as leadership opportunities.
Traditional team structures are a starting point, but not an ending point. Leaders at Mastercard, Pfizer, and Cleveland Clinic all brought in team members from both inside and outside the organization.
Rather than thinking about a decision as final, it’s helpful for innovation leaders to frame it as a “working hypothesis.”

Resources Mentioned

Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation by Linda Hill, Emily Tedards, and Jason Wild (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470)
The Way Innovators Get Traction, with Tendayi Viki (episode 512)
Doing Better Than Zero-Sum Thinking, with Renée Mauborgne (episode 641)

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