Charlie Curnow

The elimination of the New York Knicks by the Indiana Pacers on Saturday, May 31 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, 125-108, marks the end of the best season for the Knicks since 2000.

But now the loss in the Pacers series has renewed a debate over how to feel about a season of real progress, missed chances and rising expectations, according to Lee Escobedo, a contributor at the Guardian.  

The Knicks played from behind in nearly every playoff game except Game 5 of the Pacers series, Escobedo notes. Critics use this as justification to call for Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau’s dismissal.

But 17 turnovers in Games 4 and 6 of the Pacers series—not a product of coaching—were decisive, Escobedo says. The team’s low 19.5 assists per game in the series weren’t on Thibodeau either.

Thibodeau ran a wide array of actions, including horn sets, pin-downs, dribble hand-offs and high pick-and-rolls. But Indiana smothered the Knicks’ secondary options. Forcing Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson and center Karl-Anthony Towns into iso-heavy, low-efficiency looks.

Brunson recorded just five assists to Towns across the entire Eastern Conference Finals series, Escobedo says. That lack of connection played right into Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle’s hands. Carlisle’s game plan—including blitzing on switches and walling off Knicks shooting guard Josh Hart and small forward Mikal Bridges in the lane—was clinical.

Yes, Carlisle, who coached the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA championship in 2011, outcoached Thibodeau. But there’s no shame in that.

Thibodeau isn’t a fraud or a genius, Escobedo says. He gave Knicks fans what they asked for. Including deeper rotations, experimental lineups and extended minutes for the Towns-Mitchell Robinson twin tower pairing.

But it still wasn’t enough. The Pacers, who also made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024 before getting swept by the Boston Celtics, were simply better.

This wasn’t a collapse for the Knicks, Escobedo says. It was a ceiling. The Knicks are no longer a punchline. They’re a real team with real stakes and real expectations. Every game in the Pacers series was winnable.

New York wasn’t embarrassed. But they were outplayed.

“Is,” the latest album by Louisville, KY alt-rock band My Morning Jacket released in March 2025, is the group’s 10^th overall.

As the album’s release notes on Apple Music observe, the album’s sound is largely “more of the same” for the band, which formed in 1998. Rootsy eclecticism, combined with soft-but-chunky ’70s rock and lightly psychedelic insights into the human condition.

But for the first time in the band’s 25-year-plus career, for this album they recruited an outside producer instead of doing that work themselves. Namely Brendan O’Brien, who has previously worked as a producer and mixer for acts including Bruce Springsteen (“The Rising,” “Devils & Dust,” “Magic,” “High Hopes”) and Pearl Jam (nearly their entire discography).

The result was a collective shift in which the band was able to free themselves from the minutiae of record-making and relax into being a band, according to Apple Music. Bandleader Jim James compares this to an athlete connecting with the right coach (even though James himself insists he was “never good at sports”).

Partly as a result of working with O’Brien, however, a lot more demo songs were also written for these sessions than the ten that made it onto the final album—reportedly as many as a hundred. Highlights “Everyday Magic” and “Time Wasted,” for example, were written deep in the recording process, even though they appear early in the track list.

“It was hilarious because when I started working with Brendan, all these songs kept coming out,” James said. “I email him one song. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. Check this out.’ No response.” Then another, and another. “‘I wonder if he just missed the email.’”

It was only when it seemed like James had reached the end of his efforts that the right songs finally materialized.

“I realized for the first time that I don’t have to take it personally,” James said. “Even when I was trying so hard to micromanage and force everything, at the end of the day, the record makes itself.”

The elimination of the Boston Celtics on Friday, May 17 to the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, 119-81, marks seven straight NBA seasons without a repeat champion. And could mark the end of the current Celtics era.

After winning an NBA championship in 2024, the Celtics essentially brought back the same roster this year. Which in addition to being a rare opportunity for a championship team, at the time seemed like a no brainer, according to Jared Weiss, a staff writer at The Athletic.

The way the regular season went, it still seemed like the right decision. But then the team hit a wall hard in May, Weiss says. Various injuries and one illness took all the depth that had made the Celtics seem untouchable over the previous 19 months. And without the new-player spark that past champions have applied as a fresh coat of paint.

When the Celtics lost the Kristaps Porzingis factor (due to a lingering upper-respiratory illness), they suddenly looked like the old Celtics again. Unable to run offense in the fourth quarter and sometimes showing up to games a level below their opponent.

In Game 6 of the recent series against the Knicks it was hard to distinguish what their guiding principles were.

Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla’s style of basketball has more depth to it than just spamming 3-pointers, Weiss says. But a lot of his schematic approach has been the circumstance of roster construction.

The team was groundbreaking last season in its ability to put together an eight-man rotation in which everyone could shoot and create. No team had ever done it so comprehensively in quite the same way.

Under Mazzulla, they also augmented and tuned to perfection a trend of “cross-match hunting.” A defensive strategy in which a team intentionally creates mismatches by shifting players to guard opponents who are less suited to their usual position. Thereby exploiting opponents’ weaknesses and disrupting their offensive flow.

The NBA evolves in quick cycles—sometimes as short as three years, Weiss says. Teams always follow the lead of the champion. But now, that’s not the Celtics anymore.

Still, the team left its mark on the league, Weiss says, embracing the theory behind high-volume 3s in a way no team had before. They gave analytical theory character and purpose, as much as they might be derided for it.

The New York Knicks eliminated the Detroit Pistons on Thursday, April 29 in an extremely hard-fought first-round NBA playoffs series.

A thrilling Game 6 ended with a winning three-pointer from Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson. Who scored 40 points and had seven assists in Thursday’s closeout game in Detroit overall.

Throughout the series, Brunson had faced critical chants from Detroit fans who believed that the Knicks point guard had been hunting fouls as opposed to playing “ethical” hoops. And so, the closing three-pointer had an added buzz for him and the Knicks as it sent Pistons fans home disappointed.

The three-pointer itself came with less then 10 seconds left on the clock as Brunson crossed up Pistons small forward/shooting guard Ausar Thompson. Brunson, an NBA All-Star, was named the league’s Clutch Player of the Year earlier in April.

But “hard-fought” is really an understatement when it comes to this series. Because as Sports Illustrated contributor Blake Silverman notes, the last four games of the series were won, in a something of a historical anomaly, by only nine points—combined.

In Game 6, the Knicks won by three points after the Pistons extended the series Tuesday with a three-point win of their own. Previously, New York had won Games 3 and 4 in Detroit. First by two points, and then by one.

According to ESPN, the Knicks-Pistons series was only the second of all time in postseason NBA history to feature four straight games decided by three or fewer points. And the first in 40 years.

The only other series to meet that criteria was the 1981 Eastern Conference finals between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics. Boston won that series in seven games after overcoming a 3-1 deficit.

Rory McIlroy won the 2025 Masters golf tournament on Sunday, April 13. This makes him one of the only golfers in history to ever win the U.S. Open, the British, the PGA and the Masters—the four major professional tournaments—in a career Grand Slam. The only other players that have achieved this are Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen.

It was McIlroy’s first major tournament victory since 2014. His first major tournament win was the U.S. Open in 2011.

And this year’s Masters victory happened in dramatic fashion. As senior writer Michael Rosenberg notes for Sports Illustrated, McIlroy made four double bogeys over the course of the four days of the tournament and still won.

With eight holes to play on Sunday, McIlroy had built a five-stroke lead. But from there nearly found water on No. 11, and hit a highly unfortunate wedge into the pond on 13. He hit an outrageous draw into the 15th green to give himself an eagle chance. But he also missed putts of 11, 8, 6 and 9 feet. He hit an iron from 197 yards to kick-in range on 17. But then missed a 5-foot par putt to win on the 18th. Finally, however, he gave himself a 4-foot birdie putt to beat Justin Rose in a playoff and sank it.

McIlroy entered Sunday atop the Masters leaderboard. After the third round on Saturday, he had described himself as a “momentum player.”

But according to Rosenberg, it’s probably more accurate to call him an emotional one. McIlroy’s last shot seems to affect his next one, Rosenberg says, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. And the effect is hard to predict.

McIlroy’s first double bogey Thursday led to his second, Rosenberg says. But McIlroy also said his double bogey to open the final round “sort of settled my nerves.”

On the green of the final playoff hole, Rose made a routine par. McIlroy then needed to make a putt just like the one he had just missed a half hour beforehand on the 18^th. To win a tournament he had been expected to win for the past 14 years.

When the last putt fell, McIlroy dropped to his knees.

“My battle today was with my mind, and staying in the present,” McIlroy said. “It was a struggle, but I got over the line.”

The America’s Cup sailing competition is the oldest international contest still operating in any sport. The first Cup was a fleet race between the New York Yacht Club’s then-radically built America and 14 yachts of Britain’s Royal Yacht Squadron hosted at the Isle of Wight in 1851. The America won.

The regatta was then hosted in New York City between 1870 and 1920, before moving to Newport, Rhode Island from 1930 to 1983. And it has since moved around to various other global locations, including San Diego, Auckland, Valencia and most recently Barcelona in 2024.

These races represent a long-standing tradition of competition driving technological innovation within a specific field. Including in yacht design, materials and sailing techniques.

But sailing isn’t the only realm that’s seen breakthrough ideas come out of contests through the years. With Facebook’s famous annual hackathons, which have been cited as one of the company’s most important innovation drivers, serving as one of the more visible recent examples. Even leading to new features on the platform like chat and calendars.

And perhaps with good reason.

Indeed, innovation contests offer an effective way to get employees interested in sharing their creative ideas, according to Jasmijn Bol, Lisa LaViers, and Jason Sandvik. Who published an article called “The Trouble With Your Innovation Contests,” in the MIT Sloan Management Review in January 2024.

But from the start, leaders must carefully decide the organization’s ultimate goals so that they can then tailor the design of the contest to achieve those objectives, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say.

At the time of the article’s publication, Bol was the Francis Martin Chair in Business and the PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business. LaViers was an assistant professor at the A.B. Freeman School of Business. And Sandvik was an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.

In innovation contests, the best submissions are rewarded with a prize. And the possibility of winning motivates employees to share their brainstorms with organizational leaders, according to Bol, LaViers and Sandvik. That’s important so that valuable ideas don’t stall out with middle management.

Innovation contests also come with a clear set of rules and instructions that inform employees about what types of ideas the organization is seeking, according to the researchers. These motivating and directing elements have made contests popular methods for collecting ideas for hundreds of years.

Napoleon, for example, held contests that yielded important advances in military readiness. Including canned goods and margarine, which made food easier to transport.

Although contests are not a new idea, there are still many unknowns regarding the best ways to structure contests, according to Bol, LaViers and Sandvik. But the trio do offer a few guidelines based on their research.

First, if you want to make sure you are eliciting ideas from all of your employees—or that all voices are heard—you will want to design a contest with multiple, smaller prizes.

Offering several smaller prizes can increase participation among specific groups employees, the researchers say. Including those who are demographically underrepresented in creative endeavors. This is in part due to differences in a person’s confidence that their creativity will be recognized by others.

If you are interested in getting a lot of ideas that will lead to continual process improvements, on the other hand, you will want to use managers as judges, according to Bol, LaViers and Sandvik.

That’s because when managers are judging, participants submit more useful ideas. In part because participants estimate that managers will likely care relatively more about the practicality of the ideas, since an organization’s managers will bear the implementation costs.

Finally, if you are interested in eliciting one extremely good idea, then it is important to offer a single, large prize and have the judges be the peers of the contest participants, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say. As this is the contest structure with the best chance to elicit extra effort in idea development and a push for out-of-the-box thinking, according to the researchers.

There are a couple different reasons for this. The winner-takes-all structure of a contest with a single larger prize tends to motivate people to spend more time on their submissions than multiple smaller ones, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say.

And individuals submit more ideas to innovation contests when the judges are their peers—people with their same job role, whose tastes regarding creativity are easier to estimate. Especially compared to when the judges are their managers, whose tastes can be harder to predict.

Organizations don’t need to limit themselves to one contest to tap into employee creativity, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say. Instead, leaders can run different contests, with different designs, depending on organizational priorities at the time.

The key is to first think carefully about what’s important to your organization, and then design your contests accordingly.

So go ahead and start hoisting that ideation mainsail, why don’t you?

Jazz isn’t all about improvisation. In fact, most tunes you’ll hear on the radio will actually start with a pre-composed melody, or “head.”  And then there will be improvised solos after that, typically based to varying degrees on the chord changes of the original melody.

Many of the great jazz musicians, while almost universally master improvisers, have also been notable composers in their own right. Miles Davis, as well as Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane, who both played in different iterations of Davis’s quintets, spring immediately to mind.

And really, jazz wouldn’t be the same without the contributions of all three on both the composition and improvisation fronts.

Classical music has a similar dynamic at play, although somewhat in reverse. Compositions and composers are at the center of classical music. But it’s almost the point of many classical recordings that different performers will have sometimes deeply singular and contrasting interpretations of the same pieces.

There’s a similar balance that happens within businesses that are successful at innovation.

On one hand, there tends to be a more hierarchical side of an organization—the structure that gets things done. That tends to be called “process.”

But on the other hand, there also tends to be a side of a business that emphasizes the implicit coordination and exploration that produces things to do. That’s called “practice,” according to John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, who published an article called “Creativity Versus Structure: A Useful Tension” in MIT Sloan Management Review in 2001.

At the time of the article’s publication, Brown was chief scientist of Xerox and chief innovation officer of 12 Entrepreneuring in San Francisco. And Duguid was a research specialist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Practice without process tends to become unmanageable, according to Brown and Duguid. Meanwhile, process without practice can result in the loss of creativity needed for sustained innovation.

This tug of war between how companies generate knowledge in practice versus how they implement it through process is necessary, Brown and Duguid say. It’s a tension that reflects the countervailing forces that, on the one hand, spark invention. And on the other, introduce the structure that transforms those inventions into marketable products.

In isolation, these forces can destroy a company, Brown and Duguid say. But conjointly, they produce creativity and growth.

At a certain point in the development of many companies, establishing business processes becomes important, Brown and Duguid say. Process helps coordinate different communities within an organization—such as marketing and engineering—so that their practices, while allowed to flourish, don’t grow out of touch with one another.

On the other hand, aware that process can be suffocating — and seeking to foster creativity outside a process-driven structure —corporations will also often try to loosen the ties that bind them, according to Brown and Duguid.

The researchers point to AT&T’s Bell Labs, Lockheed’s Skunkworks, General Motors’ Saturn plant and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as initiatives of this kind.

These experimental “sandboxes” try to provide a safe environment for knowledge creation, Brown and Duguid say. But they can also run the risk of isolating new practices from essential process. Consequently, reintegrating ideas back into the organization can be remarkably difficult.

Companies that fail to manage the conflicting forces of practice and process thus at best alternate between attempts to foster creativity and attempts to exert control, Brown and Duguid say. And at worst, they pull apart or atrophy.

Meanwhile, productive companies, by contrast, yoke the two forces together, seeking so-called “creative abrasion,” according to Brown and Duguid.

The researchers point to Apple Computer, Adobe Systems and Microsoft as companies who have pulled this tension between process and practice off successfully. Including through their integration of ideas that were originally developed at Xerox’s PARC, such as precursors to the PC, the mouse and the Windows interface.

Brown and Duguid also point to the trek of early semiconductor ideas from AT&T’s Bell Labs to Shockley Semiconductor. And then to Fairchild and the so-called “Fairchildren”: Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and National Semiconductor. Which were other places where the researchers say places process and practice came into balance.

Overall, Brown and Duguid consider companies that can maintain forward progress to be the best-managed. Favoring neither practice nor process, but managing both.

And now, the news.

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare. To cut to the chase, the tortoise won. But what were the real differences between these two competitors, other than that the hare was fast but erratic, and the tortoise slow and steady?

For starters, we might say that the hare was almost completely inspiration-driven, waiting for flashes of energy to come to them. While the tortoise, on the other hand, was more methodical.

Going another level deeper, however, we might even surmise that the hare was a victim of its own past success. And of its own high status as a hare in the realm of animal footraces.

While the tortoise, never endowed with the same natural gifts as the hare, was almost forced to become more systematic and process-driven in the months or years leading up to their storied competition.

There’s a similar dynamic that can play out in real-world business innovation.

In fact, sustaining creativity can come down to your ability to stay focused on the challenge at hand, rather than on your identity as a “creative professional.” That’s according to Dirk Deichmann and Markus Baer, who published an article in MIT Sloan Management Review called “Mix Creativity With the Right Mindset to Serve Up Innovation” in 2023.

And in many cases, focusing too much on the outcome—or the thing that is being created—rather than on the process of creation itself can actually be counterproductive, Deichmann and Baer say.

At the time of the article’s publication, Deichmann was an associate professor at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. And Baer was professor of organizational behavior at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

First-time inventors, film directors and novelists often have a hard time replicating their early success, according to Deichmann and Baer. And as found in a study published by the researchers in January 2023 in the Journal of Applied Psychology, first-time cookbook writers can also suffer a similar challenge, and for similar reasons.

There are a few steps that people from cookbook writers to individual business professionals and leaders of teams that need to innovate can take to sustain creative work, however, Deichmann and Baer say.

The first is to use a systematic creative process. Most of the cookbook authors Deichmann and Baer interviewed for their study, for example, seemed to lack a systematic approach for developing and refining new ideas. And instead relied more on moments of insight to drive their creativity.

Innovation experts have suggested, however, that it’s helpful to have a systematic process for idea development. Deichmann and Baer say that design thinking offers one such way in.

Emerging over the last half century or so from studies of innovation processes, problem-solving and creativity, design thinking methodologies take an iterative, experimental approach to problem-solving.

One that involves gaining a deep understanding of customer needs; defining a problem area; and ideating new solutions. And then prototyping, testing and refining them, to use the definition of researchers David Dunne, Theresa Eriksson and Jan Keitzmann, writing in an article for the MIT Sloan Management Review in 2022.

A second step identified by Deichmann and Baer for sustaining creative productivity is to collaborate. Working with collaborators can make the creative process feel much less threatening to the individual, according to the researchers.

In a study published in 2018, for example, Deichmann and Baer found that once people had developed ideas on their own, they found teamwork to be a helpful way to sustain their creativity.

Finally, a third step Deichmann and Baer identify is to lower the stakes. Many studies have found that having a sense of psychological safety can enhance creativity, the researchers say. Indeed, developing a nurturing environment in which risks can be taken and failures are seen as opportunities for learning can help make the stakes feel lower.

For Deichmann and Baer’s cookbook writers specifically, this meant seeing failure and the lessons that can be distilled from it as an inevitable aspect of a creative life.

Ultimately, success in creative endeavors seems to come down to cultivating intrinsic motivation for the process of creation, according to Deichmann and Baer. And that’s irrespective of the success of the outcome, which is much less under the control of the individual creator.

Sort of like the weather on marathon day.

The Iron Chef franchise of cooking television shows, which started in Japan in 1993, saw its most recent U.S. reboot in 2022 with a series on Netflix called “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend.” Like other entries in the franchise, the new series showcases chefs with extraordinary culinary creativity, able to transform seemingly disparate ingredients into gourmet dishes.

However, the key to the structure of these shows is that the chefs who participate must operate within strict time limits and use a designated “secret ingredient.” Which in turn forces them to channel their creativity within specific constraints.

Constraints that might be in turn be thought of as extreme versions of the limitations that chefs might face in real-world operating kitchens. Where time, budgets and equipment are also finite.

It isn’t just great chefs, however, who must do this type of problem-solving.

Indeed, many people make an intuitive connection between creative ideas in business and unconstrained, blue-sky thinking. And yet, many executives aren’t clear enough about what they would consider a good idea and what’s a non-starter in light of an organization’s strategic priorities.

That’s according to Joseph V. Sinfield, Tim Gustafson and Brian Hindo, who published an article in MIT Sloan Management Review called “The Discipline of Creativity” in 2014.

At the time of the article’s publication, Sinfield was an associate professor of civil engineering at Purdue University. And a senior partner at Innosight, a global strategy and innovation consulting firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Gustafson was a principal at Innosight, and Brian Hindo was a manager at the firm.

Although thinking divergently is critical to idea generation, it’s important to delineate boundaries around both the business problem (exactly you’re proposing to solve) and the solution (what types of answers you seek and find acceptable) Sinfield, Gustafson and Hindo say, based on a decade of research and client work.

Once the problem and solution space are defined, a subsequent preparation step before brainstorming can be breaking down the problem into component parts to reduce complexity.

Teams can then take other preparation steps such as examining stakeholder needs to achieve greater empathy with solution end-users. And gaining additional perspective on the problem by consulting creative minds from both inside and outside the field.

When it comes time to start actually generating ideas, before leaping into a traditional group brainstorm, it’s instead helpful to ask participants to write down as many ideas as they can individually for five to 10 minutes, the researchers say.

One benefit of this approach is that it gives introverts — who may be shy about sharing their suggestions in a larger group setting — a chance to maximize their contribution. And a second is that having many ideas already on paper prevents the group from rallying around any specific solution too soon.

Once individuals have made their own idea lists, teams can then review the ideas and sort them into categories (for example, big picture, finer details). To ensure that the output is fully developed, teams can then detail ideas in one-page “idea resumes” that are customized to the problem at hand.

These resumes should describe the main solution features. Including how customers will learn about it or access it; what resources or processes are needed to make it a reality; and how the solution will achieve economic sustainability.

Examining business ideas in such a structured and consistent manner facilitates “apples-to-apples” comparisons, the researchers say. And ensures that ideas are evaluated on their merits rather than on how well they are pitched.

As a final step, teams can then make lists of the most important ideas to validate and design tests for each of them.

This can include spelling out exactly how much money and time each test would require, what the team hopes to learn from them and how they would reshape the platform based on the results. Sinfield, Gustafson and Hindo call this collection of assumptions and tests a “plan to learn.”

By following such an approach, teams can weave a deep understanding of the marketplace, business model generation and emergent strategy into their creative processes, according to the researchers. And thus increase chances that the thinking they generate can lead to real business impact.

And assumedly, more delicious strategic results.

Who invented the light bulb? If this were a game show, the correct answer would likely be “Thomas Edison,” in 1879. But the full history is actually more complex.

British inventor Humphry Davy demonstrated the electric arc lamp in the first decade of the 1800s. And Warren De la Rue enclosed a platinum coil in a vacuum tube and passed an electric current through it in 1840, creating an early “light bulb” as such.

But it was Edison’s research team in Menlo Park, New Jersey who first created a commercially viable incandescent light bulb that implemented a carbon filament.

The Edison team’s first models lasted 13.5 hours. After another year of tinkering, they then produced a version using carbonized bamboo in 1880 that could last as much as 1,200 hours. And this model would become the commercial standard for the next 10 years.

As Edison demonstrated, there’s a difference between creativity—the ability to come up with brilliantly novel ideas—and innovation. Or the ability to implement these ideas in a commercial or other context.

And when it comes to business settings, it’s easier to convert creativity into viable innovations in some industries than it is in others. That’s according to Theodore Levitt, who published an article called “Creativity Is Not Enough” in Harvard Business Review in 2002.

Levitt was a professor emeritus of marketing at Harvard Business School and former editor of Harvard Business Review. He died in 2006.

In advertising, for example, visual or auditory ideas can sometimes be almost synonymous with their implementation, Leavitt says. But for a steel producer or similar operating company with elaborate production processes, long channels of distribution and a more complex administrative setup, for instance, the situation can be much different.

For critics and advisers to U.S. industry who repeatedly call for more creativity in business, it’s therefore well to try to first understand the profound distinction between creativity on one hand and innovation on the other, according to Leavitt. And then, in many cases, to spend a little more time calling on creative individuals to take added responsibility for implementation.

After all, in addition to the particular industry, the productive potentials of creativity also vary with the climate of the organization and the organizational level of the idea originator, Leavitt says. And with the kinds of day-in, day-out problems, pressures and responsibilities of the executive or other person to whom the originator addresses their ideas.

As a first step, Leavitt says creative people within organizations could try to include at least some minimal indication of what their ideas involve in terms of costs, risks, manpower and time whenever they propose them. And perhaps even specific people who ought to carry the ideas through.

That’s just responsible behavior, Leavitt says, because it makes it easier for an executive to evaluate their idea as a possible course of practical action.

Meanwhile, going beyond a mere “suggestion box,” larger organizations might also take steps to form specialized groups whose function is to receive ideas, work them out and follow them through in the necessary manner.

Leavitt points to a successful example of this type of group in the Marketing Department of Mobil Oil Company. A well as at Schering Corporation (now part of Merck & Co.) under the name Management R&D. And at Nationwide Insurance Company, whose president Murray D. Lincoln made plea for the notion of a company having a “Vice President in Charge of Revolution.”

Contrary to popular perceptions shaped by their more conservative tendencies, large organizations actually have some important attributes that facilitate innovation, Leavitt says.

Their ability to distribute risk over a large economic base and among the many people involved in implementing newness is significant. They make it easier both economically and, for the individuals involved, personally to break new ground.

But on the other hand, a vast machinery does exist within big organizations to get a specific job done, Leavitt says. And that job must continue to get the toughest kind of serious attention no matter how exotically revolutionary a big operating or policy change might be.

The hope, however, is that the built-in stabilizers of bigness and group decision making can be used as powerful influences in encouraging people to risk rocking the boat when innovation is strategically necessary.

All just things to remember, perhaps, the next time a light goes on in one’s head.