Why Too Much Trust & the Wrong Tension Is Death to Innovation | MIT Sloan Management Review
Excerpted:When companies collaborate, low trust is detrimental to innovation. But so is very high trust. The optimal level, yielding maximum impact, lies in between.
The Smart microcar, invented by the tumultuous partnership between Daimler-Benz and Swatch, seems to be finally reaping the benefits of its provocative design as more consumers order this compact automobile. By contrast, the minivan codeveloped by Peugeot and Fiat (initially sold as the Peugeot 806 and the Fiat Ulysse) was the result of a harmonious relationship but never garnered much attention. It was just another minivan._______________________
...There seems to be an optimal level of trust, above or below which innovativeness or creativity is impeded.
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....examples abound of high-trust partnerships that fail to innovate and of turbulent ones that succeed.
Findings
“As the level of trust increases, effectiveness rises to a maximum level and thereafter decreases. As trust gets very high, effectiveness even goes negative.” …
Why? Because “tension does not always play a negative role in team dynamics. Indeed, while relational conflicts (which may arise, for example, from personal contempt for one or more team members) are extremely detrimental to team performance, task-oriented conflicts are beneficial because they foster critical thinking and in-depth analysis of the team’s goals and actions.”
Teams need to protect and value conflict that is related to the task, and avoid accommodations that come from not wanting to hurt each others’ feelings.
Trust as a Critical Ingredient
...it is not easy for organizations to create, and especially to maintain ...innovation-oriented partnerships. Not only must they find the right partner, negotiate, and agree on common goals, but the organizations must thereafter cooperate on a daily basis — a process that faces many stumbling blocks.
- A partner may be unable to contribute as promised.
- The decision-making structure may lack sufficient communication.
- Or the mechanism for cooperation may be unable to adapt to unforeseen changes in the market or the technological environment.
It is therefore not surprising that 50% to 80% of such partnerships end in failure. 7
...trust “constitutes a critical ingredient by which partners can weather the conflicts that economic and competitive changes, as well as shifts in corporate priorities, will throw their way.”
...Partners look to create innovation-oriented joint ventures largely because they need to combine their own knowledge with others’ in order to find solutions that will probably not materialize if acting alone. But such a relationship is unlikely to occur unless there is a sufficient level of trust to counter fears of abuses of confidential information and know-how. Contracts alone won’t help; in fact, they could inhibit innovation because they imply control of information flow and a range of legal dispositions that typically slow the project down.
...Of course, creativity is not innovation, which is the implementation of new ideas. But one might expect that more creativity would lead to more innovation in a higher trust partnership, which would lead to greater partner commitment and consequently better implementation....There seems to be an optimal level of trust, above or below which innovativeness or creativity is impeded.
