LBG - Books

Critical Knowledge Transfer: Tools for Managing Your Company's Deep Smarts®: by Dorothy Leonard, Walter Swap and Gavin Barton (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015)
Managing Knowledge Assets, Creativity and Innovation: by Dorothy Leonard (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2011)
When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity in Groups: by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap (Harvard Business Review Press, 2005)
Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom: by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap (Harvard Business Review Press, 2005)
Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation: by Dorothy Leonard (Harvard Business Review Press, 1998)

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Critical Knowledge Transfer: Tools for Managing Your Company's Deep Smarts. When managers, scientists or engineers transition to other positions or retire, what happens to their critical business knowledge developed over many years of experience—what Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap have described as deep smarts? Building on their best-selling 2005 book, Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom, Leonard and Swap, with Gavin Barton, discuss the obstacles to sharing knowledge, particularly tacit knowledge, and how those obstacles may be overcome. They identify the players who must be involved in an effective knowledge-transfer initiative, and how they can best be prepared. They then describe a number of specific tools and techniques for identifying where the deep smarts reside within the organization, and how they may be elicited and shared with successors. The authors draw on current research findings (including the results of a survey of top executives designed specifically for this book), numerous case studies and interviews with high-level executives, scientists, and engineers. The book includes a detailed case study of how GE Global Research, working with the authors, developed an effective knowledge-transfer project.

This is a book that provides both a deep dive into the nature of deep smarts, and practical tools for the HR or other executive concerned with the loss of knowledge. Individuals will also find ample resources for deepening their own smarts.

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(For bulk discounts and ordering, contact Lindsey Dietrich at Harvard Business Review Lindsey.dietrich@harvardbusiness.org)

What people are saying...

“An outstanding and comprehensive field guide for anyone who really cares about talent in his or her organization. Leonard, Swap and Barton outline the foundations of knowledge transfer and provide practical applications to help you reflect thoughtfully and act effectively on critical knowledge transfer issues. A pragmatic and compelling book.”: Teresa Roche, Vice President and Chief Learning Officer, Agilent Technologies
“With the speed of business today, companies can't afford to lose the deep, experience-based knowledge of departing employees and leaders. Critical Knowledge Transfer provides profound insight into this challenge, along with concrete tools, techniques and examples that businesses can apply immediately to prevent this hard-won knowledge from walking out the door forever.”: Steve Phillips, Chief Information Officer, Avenet, Inc.

Managing Knowledge, Assets, Creativity and Innovation. In a single volume, this selection of Dorothy A. Leonard's work covers innovations from their inception in people's heads to their implementation. While the illustrations are drawn mostly from technological settings, the principles of knowledge creation, formulation into usable products and processes and use in an internal corporate or external market, apply to innovation in general. An underlying theme running throughout the book is managing the flow of knowledge that propels innovation—especially tacit knowledge. Such knowledge is difficult to transfer or embody in a new product, process or service. However, it is not only essential but often comprises the most valuable component in the innovation.

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What people are saying...

“Dorothy Leonard is the foremost authority on the relationship between knowledge and innovation in the Western World. This collection of her work will assist any organization in building a powerful capability to create new products, processes, and services”: Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson College
“Dorothy Leonard's path–breaking research and writing on innovation have guided the field for over 20 years. This collection is an indispensable guide to her most important contributions. They reveal how knowledge, people, and organizations facilitate—or hinder—the genesis of products that change the world.”: Teresa M. Amabile, Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
“Professor Leonard has been at the forefront of integrating organizational theory, technology strategy, and the emerging discipline of knowledge management. Her work puts a human face on the trials and tribulations of managers struggling to remain competitive in fast–paced industries. And her research drives solutions–solutions that are rich in concept and pragmatic in application. I whole–heartedly recommend that practitioners and scholars alike sit down for a careful read of this important book.”: Marc H. Myer, Robert Shillman Professor of Entrepreneurship, Matthews Distinguished University Professor, Northeastern University

When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity in Groups. Most writings on creativity focus on individuals—the “creative types” that managers often rely on for really novel ideas. In When Sparks Fly, Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap argue that most important innovations come from groups, and that groups can be managed to maximize creativity. Merging their backgrounds in business and psychology, Leonard and Swap develop a multistage process to enhance creative output. They demonstrate the importance of composing the group to maximize “creative abrasion”—selecting members whose varying backgrounds and thinking styles can promote productive intellectual (but not personal) clashes of ideas. They then show how group leaders can manage this diversity to develop a range of creative options, to arrange for periods of incubation, and to converge on a final innovation. In two final chapters, the authors discuss ways in which the psychological and physical environments can be managed to further promote group creativity.

Awarded “Best Book on Creativity” by the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, this volume addresses the generation of knowledge–how the creativity of any group can be enhanced by the right management.

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What people are saying...

“These days, when even just one good idea at the right moment can make the difference between market dominance and death, the insights in this lively book could turbo–charge your team (and maybe even your own career).”: Fortune's Best Business Books
“[A]n impressive array of evidence that group creativity can be taught, nurtured, managed and even grown from scratch. With creativity and innovation poised as the next frontier of international business competition, every manager who wants to make a difference should read When Sparks Fly.”: David M. Kelley, founder and former CEO of IDEO Product Development, Engineering Design Professor, Stanford University.
“Written in quick paced prose, this book will ignite sparks for management teams looking to light the creative fire.”: Vicki Gervickas Forewordmagazine.com
“If you are a manager seeking to understand the what and why of group creativity, Sparks is an excellent book. If you are looking for the how of developing and implementing a process for group creativity, this is one book you should read. I highly recommend it!”: Jeffrey S. Pinegar The Journal of Product Innovation

Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom. One of the great challenges facing organizations is how to retain the knowledge and expertise of their most valued employees. These are the people whose long experience enables them to recognize complex patterns, make fine distinctions, and utilize a large repertoire of tacit knowledge to make rapid, wise decisions. These are people with “Deep Smarts®”, and when they leave the organization their smarts usually go out the door with them.

Drawing on a multi–year, international research project observing and interviewing experienced coaches and venture capitalists and their protégés, Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap explore how Deep Smarts® develop, how they are shaped not only by education and experience, but by beliefs, values, and social influences. They then turn to the critical issue of how Deep Smarts™ can be transferred to (or, more accurately, re–created in) those less experienced. The most powerful mode of knowledge creation and transfer is through guided experience: practice, observation, problem–solving, and experimentation under the guidance of an experienced knowledge coach.

This book will help you answer some very important questions:

Who are the “go–to” people in your organization–the ones sought out for advice, good decisions, expert diagnoses?
How do such individuals come up with “intuitive” solutions that stump others-and do it so quickly?
What if your top technical expert or your best sales person resigned? Would someone else be able to make the same nuanced judgments?
How can you ensure that the knowledge that made you successful isn’t being lost?
What’s the cutting edge in knowing how to transfer experience–based expertise?

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What people are saying...

Deep Smarts® “paints a great picture of a knowledge–sharing organization... its lessons can impact anyone dealing with cross–functional assignments and a multi–generational workforce.”: Jim Pawlak, BizBooks
“While plenty of top executives pay lip service to the importance of knowledge, few are prepared to devote real resources to enhancing its management in their own organizations. Now how smart is that?”: Simon London, Financial Times
“Deep Smarts® offers a surefire way to help people tap their experience, develop their know-how, and gain the confidence to succeed.”: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School
“Ever been outsmarted by the competition? [Deep Smarts®] dives deep into the world of intuition, judgment, and wisdom.”: Tom Kelley, General Manager, IDEO
“Deep Smarts® is a deeply intriguing book that goes to the heart of how to acquire, develop, and disseminate master level expertise. A must-read for anyone interested in high-performance organizations.”: John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist, Xerox, and Director, Xerox PARC

Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation. Why are some companies better at managing innovation than others? Basing her prescriptions on extensive, in–depth studies of technology–based companies, Dorothy Leonard probes the relationship between successful innovators and the way that they create, nurture and grow the experience and accumulated knowledge of their organizations. An organization's core capabilities, Professor Leonard argues, are interactive systems of knowledge that enhance competitiveness but can also function as core rigidities, inhibiting innovation and stifling growth. Her book provides guidance that can immediately be put into a manager's working business plan.

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What people are saying...

“At a time when we are beginning to realize that creativity and innovation may be the only inexhaustible resources at our disposal, Wellsprings of Knowledge provides deep insight into how to establish an environment that fosters the translation of knowledge into new business opportunities.”: V. Reichert, President Schlumberger–Riboud Product Centre, France
“An original and elegant thesis provides an actionable framework for competing in a world where value resides in ideas.": Industry Week
“Leonard has drawn on a wealth of experience to produce a book that is accessible without being simplistic and represents a valuable addition to the literature for practicing managers concerned with innovation.”: Sloan Management Review

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