Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation

Think buildings with sensors that detect shocks, remote-controlled heating appliances, renewable energy sources, interconnected traffic lights that prevent jams, and devices that collect and process data on anything from housing to hospitals.

By hearing how the people involved approached this vision, we learn from its successes and failures, and are given a roadmap to doing something big and bold ourselves.

So who's this book for? It's most relevant to those involved in developing technologies to help build smart, eco-friendly, efficient cities or to improve the infrastructure of existing ones. So, if this is your niche, "Building the Future" is for you. But many of its theories on vision, leadership, problem solving, collaboration, and building bridges between sectors and across industries can be applied to business more generally. It's worth adding that if IT isn't your thing, you might find this book hard going, although the authors do a reasonable job of making complex ideas accessible to a wider audience.

Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and the author of "Teaming to Innovate," "Teaming" and "A Fuller Explanation." She's also penned more than 70 articles on topics including leadership, teams, innovation, and organizational learning, and has received a number of awards for her work.

Susan Salter Reynolds is a former features writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where she worked for 23 years covering innovation, cultural trends, arts, books, and other topics. She continues to write for magazines and newspapers, including the Daily Beast, Newsday and Los Angeles Magazine.

So keep listening to hear why it's vital to give your vision space to evolve, how to form teams across disparate industries, and why small actions sometimes beat big leaps.

"Building the Future" is the story of a start-up called Living PlanIT – the brainchild of the British-born entrepreneur and former Microsoft manager Steve Lewis. Its objective was to build a sustainable, high-tech smart city on the outskirts of the Portuguese town of Porto, to design, test and showcase new technologies that could change the way cities are built in the future.

The authors shadowed Lewis and his growing team over six years, as this idea took shape. We read how Lewis persuaded talented people to back his vision; how he formed partnerships; how he came across the undeveloped land; and how he bought it at low cost from a supportive local mayor. And we accompany Living PlanIT as it runs into obstacles, explores new business models and income streams, changes direction, and keeps its vision of a smart city alive, despite the fact that it remains a work in progress at the end of the book.

Edmondson and Salter Reynolds give readers a unique insight into the thought processes and conversations of Lewis and his team members, and they take us on a tour of the sectors involved in the project – IT, architecture, construction, real estate, and city government. They explore the divergent cultures of these fields and their acceptance of, or resistance to, technological innovation and change. And they draw five leadership lessons from the experiences of Living PlanIT that can be applied generally.

These lessons are: start with a big vision; foster teamwork that bridges industry cultures, which the authors call "big teaming;" celebrate mavericks; embrace small action; and balance influence and innovation.

We're going to take a closer look at some of these lessons, beginning with the first.

As you've heard, Steve Lewis's vision was a big one. The prototype smart city – to be called PlanIT Valley – would have state-of-the-art services and a software platform called an Urban Operating System that would connect infrastructure, sensors, devices, and people. But he couldn't do it alone. He needed to get others on board.

So how do you convince talented individuals to leave what are often secure jobs, uproot themselves, and give their all to a futuristic vision that hasn't made it off the drawing board? How do you motivate people to take personal and professional risks in the name of your dream?

Edmondson and Salter Reynolds say the key is to articulate a clear vision but to give people a stake in that vision, by letting them know it's open to adaptation and change as new information arises. In the case of high-tech innovations like PlanIT Valley, it's important to stress it's both an exciting opportunity to be part of something groundbreaking, and an unpredictable ride, with no guarantee of success.

This level of risk isn't for everyone but, if you're honest from the start, you'll attract the right people to your team. For example, technology enthusiasts who loved start-up environments flocked to Living PlanIT. They were young, positive, enthusiastic, and ambitious, if a little naïve at times. It's clear, too, that Lewis had the personality to articulate his big vision and compel others to join him – the authors describe him as relentlessly positive and doggedly determined.

Lewis's vision was also open to change. As plans for the smart city hit a series of obstacles, the company realized it could generate revenue by licensing its software and selling its technology services to other infrastructure projects. This not only provided income but also allowed Living PlanIT to test and prove its operating system.

Adapting the vision when necessary is good practice, but it's important to explain the new direction and celebrate it, rather than make excuses for it. This will ensure buy-in from the team.

Edmondson and Salter Reynolds make a good point on the importance of changing tack, or even going back to the drawing board if circumstances dictate. We also like what they say about not being too quick to articulate a precise vision of the project to the media. It's more difficult to switch direction if we're publicly committed to one particular path.

Let's now take a look at how to bridge gaps between different industries and sectors – a practice the authors call "big teaming."

Collaboration is vital to the success of most businesses, whether they're start-ups or well established. As they grow, corporations can struggle to maintain good communication between departments, silos can form, and productivity can suffer. This problem is even more acute for a company on the scale of Living PlanIT, which needed to work with IT specialists, builders, architects, government officials, and real estate developers to get its idea off the ground.

The problem is these sectors have very different cultures, norms, values, procedures, time frames, and ways of working. When something goes wrong – as it often did with this project – it's easy to blame other groups. We accuse those working in other industries of being too hasty or too slow, too forward thinking or stuck in the past. We think our way of doing things is the best way – that's human nature.

So how do you break down barriers across different industries and bring people together when working on a large-scale project? The answer is to adopt practices many established firms already use to promote collaboration, but to do so much more deliberately, with an emphasis on the areas where fault lines are likely to appear.

Firstly, create an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect by making it clear that everyone has the right to share their ideas freely without fear of being shot down, no matter how crazy they seem. Also, tell people they're working on an innovative project and mistakes are inevitable in the creative process. Team members need to feel psychologically safe to speak up, try, fail, and try again. As you heard earlier, having a big vision that's open to adaptation will also help with collaboration, as will creating a space for people to share and explain their expertise, ideas and values.

To prevent barriers from forming, encourage everyone to avoid jargon and find innovative ways to communicate their ideas. For example, drawings, prototypes, models, and images are useful for communicating concepts in ways everyone can understand.

Leisure activities such as dinners, away days, and sports competitions are also a good way to build cross-sector relationships, especially if team members speak different languages or live in different countries. If time and resources are short, keep in mind that healthy relationships and informal meetings can help spur innovation that'll ultimately save effort and money.

Finally, taking time at the start to identify potential pressure points where culture clashes may occur will make it easier to avoid them.

There's nothing very new in the authors' tips on building cross-industry relationships, but the story of Living PlanIT brings them to life. We hear about the growing frustrations of ambitious IT specialists, architects, builders, and city planners as they try to work together to get the project going and navigate their different values, timeframes and working practices.

Edmondson and Salter Reynolds also offer examples of successful collaboration on other large-scale international projects, such as the Beijing National Aquatics Center (known as the Water Cube) and South Korea's state-of-the-art, green-field city called New Songdo. We like these additional examples – they back up the authors' theories and broaden the book's focus.

Let's now skip to the fourth lesson: embrace small action.

When we start off with a big vision, we can be reluctant to downsize our ambitions and take smaller steps. But doing so allows us to learn on the job without taking big risks, and it provides us with vital information that'll help us achieve our ultimate goal.

As you heard earlier, Living PlanIT took the decision to put its smart city plans on hold for a while, to focus on developing and licensing its software platform. By the end of the book, the smart city in Portugal remains elusive, but Lewis and his team are joining up with other technology visionaries around the world and putting their Urban Operating System to the test.

The company won a project and received a grant to showcase its technologies at London City Airport, installing cameras and sensors to count people, track their movements, and provide travelers with itineraries and journey information. The system also enabled passengers to order food, drink and duty free goods from their phone, to collect later. This helped boost retail sales at peak times.

Building on the success of this project, Living PlanIT began working with a shopping mall in the British city of Birmingham to implement a similar smart retail platform. It also started work on smart city projects in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Brazil.

These partnerships helped Living PlanIT test its software on a smaller, much more feasible scale, as well as collect data and earn revenue that will contribute to its more ambitious goal. We think the idea of taking small action is a useful takeaway for anyone working on a large-scale project, although it's not an original concept.

By the end of "Building the Future," Living PlanIT has laid plans and formed partnerships for its smart Portuguese city, but finance is a problem and it's yet to start construction. And it's not clear how far advanced or successful the Birmingham, Denmark or Brazil projects are. This is a disappointing ending, but it shows the complex challenges of technological innovation on such a big scale. On a more positive note, Living PlanIT's ultimate vision to build a smart city remains intact, and its software platform is being used in ambitious projects elsewhere, earning revenue and providing data.

Edmondson and Salter Reynolds wrap up with a broad-brush review of their five lessons. This is useful, but we'd have liked more examples here, and throughout the book, of how these tips can be applied to other businesses and industries. This would have given the book a broader appeal. As it stands, the choice of a single case study, with only passing references to other high-tech projects, gives it a narrow focus.

In its defense, good writing and effective storytelling bring the book's protagonists to life and add color. We read about Lewis's unrelenting optimism, including when he fought cancer as a young man, and we're given an insight into the character, appearance and mannerisms of all his team members and partners. This is a nice touch that makes the book more readable.

So if you're looking to innovate on an ambitious scale and you want to learn from those who've gone before, we think you'll get a lot out of this book. Its focus is quite specific to the technology industry, but many of its lessons can be applied elsewhere, with some thought.

"Building the Future," by Amy Edmondson and Susan Salter Reynolds, is published by Berret-Koehler Publishers.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.

Listen to Amy Edmondson in our exclusive interview, discussing "The Fearless Organization - Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth."

We have also reviewed "Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership" by Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey, published by Emerald Publishing, and you can buy your own copy of that book from the Mind Tools store.

Note: Mind Tools is a product of Emerald Works, which is part of the Emerald Group along with Emerald Publishing, but we only choose books to feature in Book Insights and Expert Interviews that we think are suitable and worthwhile for our audience, irrespective of publisher.