Saturday, February 27, 2010

Why I/we Don’t Innovate at Work ?

“Why I Don’t Innovate at Work”

“I could guess from his joyful confidence that he has transcended a barrier that prevents a whole lot of people, myself included, from creating or doing anything really exceptional: the fear of others’ opinions.

We relentlessly work to avoid “image risks,” to borrow a term from business researchers Feirong Yuan of the University of Kansas and Richard W. Woodman of Texas A&M. They use the phrase in their study of employees’ fear of making “unfavorable social impressions” on coworkers. In an analysis of responses from 425 employees in a variety of U.S. businesses, Yuan and Woodman found that worries about image risk significantly diminish employees’ innovativeness.

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