11 Leading for Creative Synthesis

A Process-Based Model for Creative Leadership

Sarah Harvey, Chia-yu Kou and Wenxin Xie

Introduction

Organizations rely on groups and teams to come up with breakthrough new ideas. This is particularly evident in creative industries like product design, filmmaking, television and music where groups of professionals work together to come up with creative art and music, consumer products, policy recommendations, research projects and a variety of other innovative outputs (Elsbach & Flynn, 2013; Elsbach & Kramer, 2003; Harvey & Kou, 2013; Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Long-Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010; Sutton & Hargadon, 1996). Those groups display distinct characteristics that create challenges for the process of developing new ideas. Creative groups work on non-routine tasks, group members are highly skilled experts with unique abilities and knowledge to contribute to the project, and they have to work in a highly interdependent fashion despite their novel tasks evolving and emerging over time. As a result of the nature of this work, creative groups face a variety of coordination challenges (Harrison & Rouse, 2014). Yet perhaps because of the importance of creative professionals to producing new ideas and the critical need for them to have freedom in the creative process, researchers have often studied these groups as if they are leaderless (e.g., Reiter-Palmon, Herman, & Yammarino, 2008; Shalley, 1991).

Research has begun to unpick the processes through which creative professionals can work together (Bechky & Hargadon, 2006; Harvey, 2014; Harrison & Rouse, 2015), building an understanding of how creativity is embedded within a social context (Amabile, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 1999; Ford, 1996; Hennessey, 2004). However, we know relatively less about how leaders can facilitate that process (Mainemelis, Kark, & Epitropaki, 2015). One reason for the disconnection between research on creative processes and leadership may be that we assume that leaders will constrain a creative process that is expected to be free-flowing, autonomous, chaotic and iterative. Leaders of creative teams have been advised to minimize power and status differences (Galinsky, Magee, Gruenfeld, Whitson, & Liljenquist, 2008) so that all members of the group can contribute their unique and diverse resources and inputs. However, evidence increasingly suggests that creativity also benefits from constraint (Binyamin & Carmeli, 2010; Gilson et al., 2005; Goldenberg, Mazursky, & Solomon, 1999). Leaders may therefore play a vital role in setting and enforcing boundaries on the collective creative process.

In this chapter, we build on a process-based view of collective creativity to suggest one set of leader behaviors that can facilitate creativity. Specifically, we extend one process for collective creativity—the process of creative synthesis (Harvey, 2014)—to the domain of leadership to develop a model of leading for creative synthesis. Creative synthesis is a dialectic process in which group members integrate their diverse inputs to develop a shared understanding of a task that guides future idea generation and enables the group to recognize highly creative ideas when they arise. We suggest that leaders can play a critical role in guiding and facilitating creative synthesis. Mainemelis, Kark, and Epitropaki (2015) have suggested that leading for creativity can be conceptualized in three ways: facilitating employees’ (or group members’) creativity, materializing the leader’s vision and integrating heterogeneous contributions. Our model draws on all three conceptualizations to describe how leaders can shape and help materialize a vision by drawing out and then enabling integration of group members’ diverse inputs.

An Overview of the Process of Creative Synthesis

The idea-generation paradigm views breakthrough ideas as resulting from a combination of diverse inputs (Staw, 2009). It assumes that creative products triumph when leaders can include more diverse individuals with different background and experiences (Muira & Hida, 2004; Watson, Kumar, & Michaelson, 1993). Introducing diverse perspectives into the creative process, however, is costly. It is difficult and time consuming for group members to appreciate, understand and use one another’s diverse knowledge and ideas (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006; Edmondson & Nembhard, 2009; Srikanth, Harvey, & Peterson, 2016; Harvey, Currall, & Hammar, 2017). As a result, groups with diverse perspectives can struggle to develop integrated creative products (Harvey, 2013). Therefore, understanding the process through which divergent perspectives are combined is critical for understanding collective creativity.

Harvey (2014) proposed a dialectic process for integrating diverse group resources into breakthrough creative output in groups. In the process of creative synthesis, group members integrate their individual ideas, information and perspectives into a shared understanding that draws uniquely on those individual inputs to enable group members to commonly interpret their task or problem. Integrated understanding can guide collective idea generating efforts to facilitate the development of radically new ideas. As specific ideas develop, they also reveal problems and inconsistencies with the shared understanding that prompts the group to continue evolving how they think about the task or problem so that the shared understanding developed by a group is dynamic over time.

Synthesis unfolds as groups iterate between three process facilitators. To develop shared understanding, groups (a) enact ideas by making them concrete (for example, through sketches, drawings, prototypes, or conversations about implementation); (b) focus their collective attention on joint creative products; and (c) build on the similarities or overlaps within their diverse perspectives. Underlying that process are the diverse resources available to the group (Amabile, Conti et al., 1996; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993) and external feedback (e.g., Harrison & Rouse, 2015). Once a shared understanding develops, it forms the basis for a new process of synthesis that occurs when the group’s view is challenged by novel diverse inputs or feedback from the external environment. In this way, creativity is conceptualized as a continuous dialectic process of building then rebuilding shared understanding and transforming it into creative output.

Contexts for Creative Synthesis and the Role of Leadership

The creative synthesis process relies on two broad assumptions. The first is that group members have unique and diverse inputs to contribute to the process, so that new perspectives and new ideas can be crafted from those different views. Without those inputs, there is nothing for the group to integrate. The second assumption is that it occurs during what could be described as intense collective creative work, in which group members (i) work together over a significant period of time, (ii) work jointly to develop creative output through both idea generation and implementation and (iii) engage in deep dialogues that reveal and reconcile perspectives. Those are groups such as teams working on films at Pixar, dance troupes (Harrison & Rouse, 2014), entrepreneurial start up teams (e.g., Forbes et al., 2006) or management consulting project teams (e.g., Wer & Stjernberg, 2003). We suggest that intense collective creative work is necessary to give group members the opportunity to uncover and understand one another’s perspectives, identify similarities and develop a shared understanding that is unique to the group. Creative synthesis is likely to be less productive in more dispersed networks like those studied by Lingo and O’Mahony (2010) or in short-term, generation-focused teams, such as brainstorming groups. Those teams are unlikely to spend enough time together to develop a sufficiently deep understanding of one another’s perspectives, for a variety of reasons. For instance, in dispersed networks, members of the creative project may spend a significant portion of their time working individually, whereas in brainstorming groups, members work together over a short period of time and have relatively superficial level dialogues.

Since Fiedler (1978) first proposed the contingency model of leadership, scholars have agreed that context can influence the type of leadership that emerges and it effectiveness (Oc, 2018). Therefore, leaders need adjust their leadership behaviors according to the context. For example, prior research suggests that delegative leadership is more effective for helping groups to diverge whereas providing Directive leadership is more effective for helping groups to converge (Gebert, Boerner, & Kearney, 2010). Leaders also need different conflict management styles at different points in the creative processes (Farh, Lee, & Farh, 2010). The contingency view therefore suggests that leaders will need to adjust to the features of the context for creative synthesis described earlier. For more dispersed networks or for brainstorming groups, leaders may need to directly intervene in the process of integrating perspectives by making decisions and resolving conflicts, reducing the negative consequences of political negotiation, status conflicts and dysfunctional interpersonal interactions (Edmondson, 1999; Marks et al., 2001; Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks, 2001). Indeed, prior literature often recommends relying on leaders to engage in creative synthesis themselves by collecting ideas and perspectives from organizational members, integrating them and using them to set the creative direction of the organization (Lewis et al., 2002; Mainemelis, Kark, & Epitropaki, 2015).

For creative synthesis in teams involved in intense creative work, we propose a different solution. We suggest that leaders can direct and facilitate the processes that will enable groups to engage in the process of creative synthesis. Prior literature shows that leaders can fulfil the leadership functions with structure, schedules, monitoring and motivating group members to wisely spend time and effort to combine different perspectives (Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam, 2010; Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004). We apply the insight that leaders can facilitate creative processes to the process of creative synthesis next.

A Model of Leading Through Creative Synthesis

We extend the model of creative synthesis by suggesting that leaders can facilitate that process in three ways. We conceptualize creative work as unfolding through cycles of initial preparation, generating synthesis and ideas, and then obtaining feedback, which triggers another cycle of creative work. In the initial phase, leaders can marshal the appropriate resources that form productive inputs into the synthesis process. In the next phase of generating synthesis and ideas, leaders can help groups to engage in each of the three process facilitators. In the final phase, leaders can help groups to obtain and productively use external feedback to trigger the next cycle. We summarize our model of leading for synthesis in Figure 11.1.

Phase I: Marshalling Resources

Our model is consistent with prior research that focuses on how leaders compile collective resources to support creativity. To lead for synthesis, leaders must also establish a positive interpersonal environment in which group members feel motivated to contribute and comfortable drawing on one another’s contributions (Amabile et al., 1996), and compile a group of people whose individual creative thinking skills can contribute to the group (Amabile, 1988; Taggar, 2002).

Figure 11.1 Leading for Creative Synthesis

Of particular importance to the model of leading for synthesis is composing the group for creativity. This is a tricky leadership task. Variety between group members in terms of the perspectives and knowledge triggers the creative synthesis process by producing conflict and dissent, and prevents groups from reaching consensus prematurely (Harvey, 2014). Therefore, diversity in group composition is critical. Yet at the same time, synthesis is not possible if group members’ knowledge structures are too distant from one another or incompatible (Cronin & Weingart, 2007). Therefore, getting the right mix of diverse group members, with an underlying thread of common interest through which to connect those diverse perspectives, is a fundamental function of leadership in the creative synthesis model.

A further critical resource for groups engaged in this process is time. Process facilitators like searching for similarities and integrating ideas takes a significant amount of cognitive effort and engagement with other group members. Therefore, leading for creative synthesis requires leaders to manage their time in two ways—leaders need to give the group adequate time to engage in the creative process as well as ensure that group members spend enough of that time working together to help build shared understanding.

Phase II: Helping Groups to Engage in the Process Facilitators Through Leader Behaviors

To help groups deeply engaged in collective creative work to achieve creative synthesis, leaders should facilitate the process of integrating perspectives into collective output. This is perhaps the most important way that our model departs from prior work. Whereas research has traditionally emphasized the importance of creating a supportive environment, such as establishing a climate for creativity (Eisenbeiss, van Knippenberg, & Boerner, 2008; Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2013) or building psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999), or has viewed leaders as responsible for integrating inputs themselves, our model highlights how leaders should aim to direct the creative process to help groups synthesize diverse perspectives and ideas. To that end, we offer a set of leader behaviors that corresponds to the process facilitators in the creative synthesis model.

Inciting Action for Enacting Ideas

We suggest that a first set of leader behaviors involves inciting action. Groups follow a variety of styles in their early development, often beginning with planning activities (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001; Gersick, 1988). However, the creative synthesis model suggests that groups should begin instead by discussing ideas in detail, making them concrete, and realizing them in some physical form like drawings, sketches, or PowerPoint documents. Those physical artefacts are likely to be basic and provisional, yet they can help groups to reveal and build collective knowledge, communicate more easily and generate positive affect. Enacting ideas also helps leaders to construct a problem in a way that group members could reconcile multiple and even competing goals and understanding (Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004). For instance, Harvey and Kou (2013) found that one path for collective creativity was to generate and discuss a small number of ideas in concrete detail at the beginning of a group interaction. They suggested that doing so helped groups to establish a problem framework and evaluation criteria that could be used to consider subsequent ideas.

Leaders can help groups to enact ideas in two ways. The first is to directly begin to enact ideas themselves through physical objects such as drawings, prototypes, or performances (e.g., role plays). Leaders can initiate those physical artefacts themselves. For instance, collecting pictures to develop design mood boards or opening role playing conversations. Doing so can help group members begin to visualize output and set a group norm for enacting or physically representing ideas.

However, getting group members involved in enacting ideas themselves is also critical; otherwise, the group may simply rely on the leader to enact ideas and limit their own engagement in the creative process. Therefore, a second way leaders can help groups to enact ideas is to incite action, so that group members themselves begin to move ideas toward physical representation. This could occur by promoting conversations around specific ideas or objects, asking for visualizations or requesting performances like presentations of ideas. At the same time, leaders must be careful not to allow the discussion to focus on personal and affective aspects, but rather focus on the problem at hand and its conceptualizations (Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004).

Alternatively, however, a variety of contextual factors can also promote action in a way likely to lead groups to enact ideas without direct intervention. In particular, leaders can influence group creativity by providing appropriate physical spaces to enable the creative process. For instance, one study found that having group members move around while generating new ideas increased information elaboration and reduced territoriality over ideas (Knight & Baer, 2014). Thus, to the extent that leaders can provide non-sedentary work spaces, they may help groups to enact ideas. Other work has associated work spaces that can act as physical representations of ideas themselves with creativity (e.g., Sutton & Hargadon, 1996; Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012). Being able to pin things on walls or reconfigure the work space allows creative groups to move around in the process of making connections between ideas, visualize and externalize their thoughts, and remember ideas that may otherwise be lost. For leaders, these contextual factors are more than simple fixes that can be easily instituted, however. They require leaders to both establish stimulating physical spaces and build a culture in which creators feel comfortable and free to move around and play with ideas. Leaders can also go a step beyond this by providing resources to begin implementing ideas early in the creative process. Idea implementation can then act as an indispensable part of idea generation (Škerlavaj et al., 2014). For instance, experimenting by implementing an idea with a small critical target population can provide feedback that facilitates further idea generation.

Directing Collective Attention

A second set of leader behaviors centers on directing collective attention toward the group’s shared understanding or dominant paradigm. Focusing collective attention helps group members to cognitively engage with and develop new ideas, facilitates interaction and can help to create psychological meaning in new ideas. The advice to focus collective attention appears to run counter to the traditional idea generating approach of diverging in many directions (e.g., Paulus, 2002). What we propose is a more focused path for diverging (e.g., Cropley, 2006). Leaders are critical for facilitating that focus.

Leaders can facilitate collective attention by directing group members’ attention toward collective products. During idea generation, this amounts to controlling the divergent processes of group members. We propose two ways that leaders may facilitate collective attention during idea generation. The first way is to frame ideas and cues from the group discussion to draw attention to those things that may be most engaging for the group, helping to create and sustain attention. People tend to pay more creative attention to opportunities than to threats, so framing information and tasks in terms of opportunities can help to direct members’ collective attention. For instance, when leaders classify strategic issues as opportunities, it encourages subordinates to think freely, resulting in a more creative outcomes (Naidoo, 2016). People also tend to notice and attend to novel stimuli (Wu & Huberman, 2007). However, people can also overlook novel ideas that are generated by others, particularly if those ideas do not fit with their own understanding of the problem, evaluation criteria or information that is relevant for the task (Stasser & Titus, 1985; Harvey, 2013). Therefore, the leader can highlight unique ideas or contributions that have not been previously discussed by the group. Research suggests that even straightforward, explicit instructions are enough to improve creative problem solving (Reiter-Palmon, Mumford, & Threlfall, 1998), so simple directions are likely to shift collective attention.

A second way that leaders can promote collective attention is directing group members’ attention toward their shared (or emerging) framework. Leaders can use the conflicting goals between group members to restrict how issues are framed (Butler & Scherer, 1997; Stokes, 1999). Evidence from a study by Mumford et al. (1996) suggests that people who focus on factual information and ignore irrelevant data produce higher quality, and more original solutions on the creative tasks. That focusing on relevant factual data serves as the benchmark to identify alternative perspectives. In other words, by creating a new framework, group members may become more adept at identifying and using alternative concepts, and leading to better collective focus and more original solutions (Baughman & Mumford, 1995).

Finally, a third way that leaders can direct collective attention during idea evaluation is by creating an environment that encourages shared emotion and protects the group from distraction (Metiu & Rothbard, 2013). Shared emotion develops through close interaction, routines and rituals (Collins, 2005). Shared emotion can be enhanced by, for instance, sharing and celebrating successes or by working together to overcome problems. Leaders can therefore manage shared emotion by creating rituals or imposing challenges that provide opportunities for groups to pull together. When groups share experiences, it can focus their attention internally to the group task.

Identifying Overlaps for Building on Similarities

A final set of leader behaviors involves helping group members to identify overlaps between their divergent perspectives and ideas. According to the creative synthesis model, building on similarities is the beginning of synthesis; groups develop those ideas they are commonly attracted to as they integrate ideas. Building on similarities facilitates creativity because similarities form the foundation for new connections, ease group interactions and provide opportunities for group members to become affectively attracted or attached to ideas.

Leaders can help groups to build on members’ similarities by establishing clear goals that can be assessed with transparent evaluation standards. Transparent evaluation criteria make it easier for group members to know how to plug their own ideas and perspectives into the collective task (Faraj & Xiao, 2006; Harvey & Mueller, 2018). Restricting the problem framework in this way has been linked to more creative solutions, because it channels group members’ divergent inputs. The existence of multiple and conflicting goals places a restriction on how a problem can be framed and the type of solutions that are appropriate, as multiple goals need to be integrated and satisfied (Butler & Scherer, 1997; Stokes, 1999). The need to integrate multiple goals and take into account the restrictions that are placed because of conflicting goals may result in a more complex and innovative problem construction, leading to higher quality and more original solutions.

Alternatively, leaders can help groups to establish the common framework by encouraging group members to discuss their different perspectives to identify similarities. For ambiguous creative ideas, this task is non-trivial—on creative tasks, it is unclear how to judge what is a good idea and defining idea quality requires input from multiple stakeholders (Long-Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010). Leaders can provide that judgment, but without explicitly deciding on evaluation standards for the group. For instance, leaders can be attuned to similarities in group members’ ideas and opinions, so that they can direct the group toward those overlaps. To be effective at this, leaders may need a mix of both broad and deep technical competence in the group task. Leaders need broad enough experience so that they can identify important contributions from a range of perspectives and see overlaps between group members’ diverse ideas. Yet they may also need sufficiently deep technical competence for group members to view their direction as legitimate (Kacperczyk & Younkin, 2017).

Leaders can also help group members to identify similarities by encouraging group members to take on the perspectives of other group members (Hoever, Van Knippenberg, Van Ginkel, & Barkema, 2012) and to construct multiple different problem frames (Reiter-Palmon et al., 1998). They can also prompt group members to open up their thinking by giving individual members a variety of assignments, increasing the diversity within each person, which facilitates cross-domain understanding (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002; Reiter-Palmon et al., 1998). Leaders can help groups to identify similarities by encouraging group members to search for other’s unique and unshared information, which may provide the basis for making novel connections (Stasser & Birchmeier, 2003).

Finally, helping groups to identify overlaps and similarities may involve strategically excluding the views of some group members at different points in the creative process if their perspective is preventing integration between other group members. Long-Lingo and O’Mahony (2010) found that excluding members of the creative network from certain periods during the process was critical for synthesizing diverse inputs. We extend this notion to suggest that in closer creative teams, even some views may be temporarily excluded in order to achieve a temporary synthesis and move group discussion forward. This is helpful because not all perspectives can be reconciled (Cronin & Weingart, 2007), particularly at a given point in time (whereas, for instance, deeper interrelationships may emerge over a longer time frame; Putnam et al., 2016). However, temporarily excluding a group members’ viewpoint takes significant skill to ensure that person does not feel sidelined or left out. On the contrary, their contribution is actually critical to maintaining the synthesis process. If a member of the group has been excluded at one stage, their perspective can be brought back in after a temporary synthesis is achieved so that they trigger a new dialectic process aimed at integrating their perspective with the rest of the group. That can help the group’s synthesized understanding to remain dynamic.

Phase III: Feedback

Finally, the creative synthesis model relies on feedback from the external environment to fuel new conflicts that help groups to renew their shared understandings continuously over time. Feedback, therefore, forms a critical link between one dialectic process of synthesizing diverse inputs and the next dialectic process of revising and redeveloping the synthesis. Since leaders are the group’s most critical link to the external environment, facilitating external feedback is an important facet of leading for synthesis. Leaders can act as brokers (Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010) or boundary spanners (Marrone, 2010) to connect groups to external parties. In particular, we propose that leaders can use their status and influence to find opportunities for the group to present emerging ideas to a variety of stakeholder audiences. Prior research has found that a leader’s centrality within her network of peers is associated with higher group creativity (Venkataramani, Richter, & Clarke, 2014). Recent research further suggests that in obtaining external feedback, a critical task for leaders is to establish the appropriate social frame for interaction to take place (Fisher, Pillemer, & Amabile, 2017).

How Might Leaders Achieve These Behaviors?

Some evidence suggests that leadership itself benefits from a dialectic process (Kearney and Gebert, 2009; Kazanjian et al., 1999; Smith & Tushman, 2005). Leaders may need to embody different ends of a spectrum to successfully engage in leading for synthesis—they need to encourage conflict and divergence and bring group members together, to help groups enact ideas and to build new ways of understanding problems and to develop an internally cohesive problem framework while continuously exposing that framework to external feedback. Leading creative teams may therefore require a combination of different leadership styles. For example, inspiring members to generate novel ideas and challenging existing paradigms may require transformational leadership style. Listening to members’ ideas, helping members when they need aid and creating a positive atmosphere for all group members may require a servant leadership style. Therefore, leading for synthesis requires contextual leadership, which allows the leaders to engage in different ends of the spectrum as necessary. Here we suggest that different characteristics of the creative practices itself also influence which type of leadership behaviors or leadership styles can be most effective.

We suggest that another avenue to achieve the balance of skills necessary for leading for synthesis is through shared leadership. Sharing leadership does not mean the group is leaderless, but that different group members with different skills and leadership styles could have the opportunities to provide leadership functions when the context requires so. In shared leadership, leadership functions can be distributed among team members regardless of their official role (Gibb, 1954; Pearce & Conger, 2002). With shared leadership, different leadership styles and different leadership behaviors can occur simultaneously or sequentially. That means that leaders can engage in different ends of the spectrum as necessary, but also that in doing so, they can iterate back and forth between those ends in a way that promotes synthesis at the leadership level. Sharing leadership requires the team to commit to the same goal, trust and support each other (Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007). That also suggests that shared leadership could help build shared understanding by helping to find similarities between group members. Sharing leadership could maximize the utilization of group members’ skills and expertise (Friedrich et al., 2009). That means group members with different perspectives and ideas have opportunities to influence the team processes so that group members are more motivated to pay collective attentions. Moreover, sharing leadership could stimulate members to be more sensitive to the context requirements. Because in shared leadership, it is critical to justify who will emerge as a leader, who will be perceived to be a legitimate leader or who may succeed (Derue & Ashford, 2010). The context requirements provide legitimate reasons for who shall provide leadership in a given situation(Aime et al., 2013). Therefore, shared leadership may help group members deal with the ambiguity of the creative processes and have a better judgment of when to do what. Shifting roles is a form of sharing leadership (Contractor et al., 2012). It may also drive leaders to stand in each other’s shoes to understand situations, prompting more perspective taking and helping them to see connections between diverse inputs.

Conclusion

Leading for creativity may be unlike other forms of leadership. It requires leaders to both encourage group members to diverge and contribute their unique perspectives and ideas, and to gently bring group members together to move their ideas forward in a common collective direction. In this chapter, we have set out a process model of leading for creative synthesis and some associated leader behaviors to facilitate that process.

Our model reiterates some aspects of leadership that have been highlighted in prior research. For instance, we suggest that leading for creative synthesis involves providing groups with resources of sufficient time and a positive group environment and establishing clear and transparent goals. We also elevate and elaborate the importance of some aspects of leadership. For example, our model emphasizes the careful management of group composition for both diversity and overlap, and engaging feedback from external audiences. These are both fundamental to creative synthesis, and so prioritized over environment and goals in our model. Finally, our model introduces some new leadership behaviors. Those include inciting action, encouraging shared emotion and carefully excluding group members at different points of the creative process.

Our model is also most relevant to teams engaged in the context of intense collective creative work—those who collectively engage with creative products over some period of time, working closely together. Teams who do not have those characteristics are likely to lack the time and resources to synthesize their diverse perspectives in a way that is productive for creativity. They may therefore require more Directive leadership in the form of setting the vision for the group. From our perspective, leading for synthesis may be seen more as a process of continuously managing uncertainty and ambiguity (Long-Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010) by allowing group members to diverge but also helping them to converge periodically. Rather than emphasizing how leaders can set the vision themselves, or create an environment where new ideas arise or a context where new ideas are resourced and implemented, our model focuses on the way that leaders can help others to integrate and synthesize ideas as they engage in a messier middle process that takes them between idea generation and idea selection.