Heidi K. Gardner

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">In Brief</h4>
 <div class="ideainbrief-contents">
  <h5>The Challenge</h5>
  <p>A multifaceted problem like cancer must be fought on many fronts. So the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute had to coordinate across highly specialized areas of expertise—which was difficult to do.</p>
  <h5>The Roadblocks</h5>
  <p>Staying on the cutting edge required independent, undirected research. And Dana-Farber’s star researchers liked calling the shots in their own labs—they had built their careers on niche expertise.</p>
  <h5>The Solution</h5>
  <p>Dana-Farber created 10 Integrative Research Centers to facilitate knowledge and resource sharing across fields, helping the stars operate with financial discipline and do even better work. The institute also added incentives for collaboration while retaining the traditional funding model, which continued to drive breakthroughs.</p>
 </div>
</article-ideainbrief><p>How can you transform a competitive, star-driven culture into a collaborative one? Companies struggle with that question, particularly when knowledge work is the offering. Here’s the underlying tension: Their subject-matter experts must deeply immerse themselves in their disciplines to stay on the cutting edge. And yet that expertise must be integrated across fields and areas of practice to solve the complex problems that today’s customers <a href="/2016/06/wicked-problem-solvers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">face.</a></p>

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<p>By pooling their know-how and resources across internal boundaries, organizations can solve problems more creatively, increase their productivity, and reap higher profits. But collaboration is not easy, given how time-pressed managers are, how reluctant they are to cede control over projects and relationships, and how tough it is for them to stop working in silos when they&#8217;ve been doing it for ages.</p>
<p>About 10 years ago, leaders at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute realized that the growing complexity of the problems its experts were charged with solving meant their fiefdoms couldn&#8217;t last forever. In developing a case study about Dana-Farber, Gardner saw firsthand how difficult it was for the organization to move away from a star-based system to one that got researchers working together across specialties and facilities. She demonstrates that its story has clear parallels with business and outlines how executives can pull the levers of change in a wide range of companies.</p>

Getting Your Stars to Collaborate

By pooling their know-how and resources across internal boundaries, organizations can solve problems more creatively, increase their productivity, and reap higher profits. But collaboration is not easy, given how time-pressed managers are, how reluctant they are to cede control over projects and relationships, and how tough it is for them to stop working in silos when they’ve been doing it for ages. About 10 years ago, leaders at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute realized that the growing complexity of the problems its experts were charged with solving meant their fiefdoms couldn’t last forever. In developing a case study about Dana-Farber, Gardner saw firsthand how difficult it was for the organization to move away from a star-based system to one that got researchers working together across specialties and facilities. She demonstrates that its story has clear parallels with business and outlines how executives can pull the levers of change in a wide range of companies.

Getting Your Stars to Collaborate

Summary.

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