Managing the activity of creative groups is not the same as business management in its traditional meaning. Actually, leading a creative effort does not resemble any other form of management. Creative leaders have to realize that innovations happen not because a genius has a flash of inspiration but through the collaboration including numerous efforts and failures which creative people meet on their way.
Innovation is the collaboration of numerous geniuses each of whom has their own view on the outcome. The role of the leader is to unleash the talents of individuals but to control them so that ideas and perspectives of each member do not interfere with the general progress made by the team.
Leaders of creative companies are not visionaries themselves. They are architects of the environment where creative minds do their job. Leaders have to make sure that employees are creating their own innovations and do not need to impose their own way of thinking. Managers realize that they do not need to create themselves, they need to give the way to their team.
Most innovations arise from the bottom-up initiatives. Talented people usually do not want to follow ideas of others, they want to cooperate and create these ideas together. In this respect, leaders have to ensure that their creative business has the three capabilities of innovation: creative abrasion, creative agility, and creative resolution. The first principle concerns the creation of ideas through debate. It shall include sound arguments which form a range of alternatives. Creative agility is necessary to test and refine ideas achieved at the previous stage. Creative resolution is how people combine ideas and implement them to get their result of the creative work.