In Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation, Linda A. Hill argues that innovation fails not because companies lack ideas, but because they struggle to scale those ideas across the enterprise—and that the solution lies not in structure or processes, but in leadership.

Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative, and one of the top ten management thinkers in the world as ranked by Thinkers50. In her new book, co-authored with Emily Tedards and Jason Wild, she draws on deep case studies of organizations from Mastercard to Pfizer to Pixar to show that scaling innovation requires three distinct but complementary leadership roles: architects, bridgers, and catalysts.

In her conversation with Adam Job, senior director at the BCG Henderson Institute, she discusses why innovation labs alone don’t work, the ABCs of innovation leadership, how to build a culture of creative abrasion, and why even senior leaders need coaching to get innovation right.

Key topics discussed: 

[01:28] Why innovation fails at the point of scaling, not ideation
[03:59] The ABCs of innovation leadership: architects, bridgers, catalysts
[06:29] Getting metrics and incentives right for innovation
[10:42] What bridgers do and why organizations don’t have enough of them
[14:33] Is innovation leadership a team sport or a solo act?
[18:48] How to know which role you’re best suited to and how to learn the others
[24:04] How incumbent leaders can create urgency without being the new CEO

Additional inspirations from Linda A. Hill:

• Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014)
• Article: Why Great Innovations Fail to Scale, co-authored by Emily Tedards and Jason Wild (March–April 2026 issue of Harvard Business Review)