????在商界，“創(chuàng)造力”是個時髦詞語，用來描述員工的一大優(yōu)點。人們普遍認(rèn)為，擁有創(chuàng)造性思維的員工可以提高整個團(tuán)隊的創(chuàng)新水平。創(chuàng)造力確實能夠帶來許多創(chuàng)意。然而， 一旦需要在企業(yè)內(nèi)部推廣這些創(chuàng)意，以及隨后將它們推向市場，光有創(chuàng)造力還不夠。信念更為重要。

????看看如今最受人尊敬的企業(yè)領(lǐng)袖就知道了。他們從不妥協(xié)，即使是在面對廣泛質(zhì)疑甚至客戶抱怨的時候也是如此。年紀(jì)輕輕的Facebook創(chuàng)始人馬克?扎克伯格因其準(zhǔn)確的洞察力而著稱，正是這種洞察力推動了Facebook的每次設(shè)計調(diào)整以及軟件更新，盡管每次改變都必然會在7.5億多Facebook用戶中引發(fā)強(qiáng)烈不滿（應(yīng)該指出的是，用戶的信念也有助于推動Facebook的持續(xù)創(chuàng)新和隱私政策的完善）。

????2010年，亞馬遜（Amazon）創(chuàng)始人杰夫?貝佐斯在普林斯頓大學(xué)（Princeton University）的畢業(yè)典禮上發(fā)表演講。他問畢業(yè)生們：“面對批評，你們是選擇低頭還是遵循自己的信念？”面對這些渴望追隨其腳步的熱切聽眾，貝佐斯沒有羅列平淡過時的成功建議，而是提出了這個有力的詰問，也使我們得以一窺其創(chuàng)新風(fēng)格，以及促使他將亞馬遜從一家在線圖書銷售初創(chuàng)公司打造成為零售業(yè)巨頭，成為蘋果公司（Apple）暢銷產(chǎn)品iPad及其iTunes服務(wù)的主要競爭對手的動力所在。

????不是只有公司創(chuàng)始人、CEO或者常春藤聯(lián)盟畢業(yè)生才能從擁有強(qiáng)烈的信念中受益。最新數(shù)據(jù)顯示，員工從事自己感興趣的工作，能夠在公司里推動自己的想法時，他們就會變得更加積極熱情、富有創(chuàng)意。哈佛商學(xué)院（Harvard Business School）教授特麗薩?阿馬比爾及其同事史蒂文?克萊默收集了7家公司238位管理人員的1.2萬篇電子日記，他們在日記中描述了自己在日常工作中的心理狀態(tài)。阿馬比爾和克萊默藉此分析了這些人的工作動力，結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個趨勢。9月，他們在《紐約時報》（New York Times）的一篇評論文章中寫到，“在重要工作中取得進(jìn)展”是讓這些員工充滿動力的關(guān)鍵。阿馬比爾的研究顯示，信念很重要。如果工作內(nèi)容與員工個人的堅定信念相一致，他們就會動力十足。

????谷歌（Google）通過其“20%政策”來傳導(dǎo)信念這種強(qiáng)大的力量。根據(jù)該規(guī)定，谷歌員工需要將1/5的工作時間用于他們感興趣和熱愛的項目。眾所周知，正是這個規(guī)定催生了谷歌郵箱（Gmail）和谷歌地球（Google Earth）的飛行模擬軟件。除了關(guān)于谷歌管理方式及其如何引導(dǎo)創(chuàng)新思維的大量論述以外，看看谷歌員工們自己如何看待這個規(guī)定也是有好處的。他們的博客和他們的話語就可以告訴我們答案。今年早些時候，谷歌安卓手機(jī)操作系統(tǒng)的工程主管戴夫?伯克在谷歌公司官方博客的一篇文章中，將這個規(guī)定稱為“我的創(chuàng)新執(zhí)照”。在谷歌這樣的公司里工作，即使是擁有免費(fèi)的食物、大量的資源、雄心勃勃的管理者和才能卓越的同事，可能也不足以產(chǎn)生渴望中的創(chuàng)新。個人熱情足以改變公司政策，這樣的企業(yè)文化才是值得效仿的管理戰(zhàn)略。

????企業(yè)無論規(guī)模大小，都應(yīng)該鼓勵每個員工追求自己的信念，從最高管理者到低層雇員都不例外。他們不必一定要成為啦啦隊長式的人物。實際上，各級管理人員都應(yīng)該注意員工對效果不好的項目、產(chǎn)品或服務(wù)的強(qiáng)烈反應(yīng)，這樣做不無裨益。比如，在青蛙設(shè)計公司（Frog），許多人都抱怨公司的工作表現(xiàn)內(nèi)部評估工具不好，說這個軟件是多么的復(fù)雜笨拙，輸入文本是多么的費(fèi)時（是否聽起來有點耳熟？）。管理人員注意到了這種不滿，并欣然接受。顯然，如果這么多人都對這個工具反映強(qiáng)烈，可能這個工具確實存在問題。這時，我建議說，假如我們的員工覺得這個工具不適合，干嘛不拿出改進(jìn)方案呢？一位設(shè)計人員站出來，接受了這個挑戰(zhàn)，設(shè)計出了一個新的工具取代了原有的工作表現(xiàn)評估軟件。

????這件事情告訴我們的團(tuán)隊，公司愿意傾聽員工的心聲，重視他們的興趣，并且不怕承擔(dān)風(fēng)險，愿意引導(dǎo)民心。青蛙設(shè)計公司的實踐告訴我們，所謂員工至上的管理方式就是創(chuàng)造一種企業(yè)文化，始終讓每個人都有機(jī)會向高管表達(dá)自己意見，不管是面對面的市政廳式會議也好，還是全公司范圍內(nèi)的季度電話會議也好。這樣一來，我們就可以知道哪些員工有話要說，誰可以提出新的方法來改進(jìn)我們的工作方式，以及誰的意見已經(jīng)成熟，不怕在面向全公司的舞臺上提出來。

????從最高管理者到行政助理，不管處于公司的哪個層級，受信念驅(qū)動的思考者希望分享他們的獨(dú)特見解，而不是為了名聲或權(quán)力。他們不只認(rèn)為自己的想法很好，而且強(qiáng)烈地相信這些想法值得付諸實踐。這類思考者（和實踐者）的可貴之處在于，他們能夠告訴組織內(nèi)部和整個世界，他們?yōu)槭裁匆_發(fā)自己正在著手開發(fā)的產(chǎn)品，為什么要啟動自己正在啟動的新方案。即使他們的想法可能并非首創(chuàng)（請記住，Kindle并不是第一款電子閱讀器，iPod也不是第一款MP3播放器，谷歌也不是第一個搜索引擎，同樣，F(xiàn)acebook也不是第一個社交網(wǎng)站），但他們改善世界或者公司職場日常生活質(zhì)量的熱情和想法是強(qiáng)烈的。他們同樣可以充滿動力。因此，他們會非常具有說服力。這種專注、動力和說服力的結(jié)合，而非僅僅只有創(chuàng)造力，才能將創(chuàng)意推向市場，并在正確的時間推向正確的消費(fèi)者。

????多琳?羅倫佐是國際化創(chuàng)新公司青蛙設(shè)計（Frog）的總裁，該公司的母公司愛瑞森特集團(tuán)（Aricent Group）的執(zhí)行副總裁和總經(jīng)理。多琳負(fù)責(zé)推動青蛙設(shè)計公司的企業(yè)戰(zhàn)略并監(jiān)督其全球運(yùn)作。在為這家公司效力的14年里，她在公司重組中起到了重要作用，使其從一家傳統(tǒng)的小型設(shè)計公司變成了世界上最著名的國際化創(chuàng)新公司之一，與眾多的財富500強(qiáng)客戶進(jìn)行了廣泛合作。她還是2011-2012世界經(jīng)濟(jì)論壇（World Economic Forum）新興技術(shù)全球議程委員會（Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies）的成員。

????譯者：千牛絮

????In business circles, "creativity" has become a buzzword to describe a desired trait among employees. It's widely believed that having creative thinkers on staff will boost overall team levels of innovation. Yes, creativity can lead to a surplus of original ideas. But when it comes time to sell those concepts internally, and then later take those ideas to market, creativity is not enough. More important is conviction.

????Look at the most-admired business leaders today. They tend to resist compromises, even when faced with widespread skepticism or even complaints from customers. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's young founder, is known for the exactness of his vision, which drives each design or software tweak of the social networking software that he created, despite the now-requisite uproar each change incites among Facebook's 750 million-plus users (whose own convictions, it should be noted, help drive subsequent iterations and privacy policies of Facebook).

????Consider how Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos asked the graduating class at Princeton University during his 2010 commencement speech there, "Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?" A powerful alternative to reading a corny list of tips for success to an eager crowd hoping to follow in his footsteps, his tough question offered a glimpse into his own style of innovation, and what drove him to build Amazon from a start-up online bookseller to a retail juggernaut to a serious challenger to Apple's (AAPL) top-selling iPad hardware and its iTunes service.

????But it's not just company founders and CEOs or Ivy League grads that can benefit from having a strong sense of conviction. New data suggest that when employees pursue work that they feel strongly about, and can move their ideas forward within their organization, they are more enthusiastic and productive. Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and her colleague Steven Kramer collected 12,000 electronic diary entries from 238 executives in seven different organizations. They analyzed what motivated these everyday individuals, who described their daily psychological well-being at work. Amabile and Kramer saw a trend emerge: "simply making progress in meaningful work" [italics mine] was key for these workers to feel engaged, Amabile and Framer wrote in a New York Times opinion essay in September. What Amabile's research shows is that conviction is important. Work that appeals to employees' firmly held beliefs, which has personal meaning to workers, is what drives them.

????Conviction is the powerful force that Google (GOOG) channels with its 20% policy, which requires Googlers to devote one-fifth of their time in the office pursuing a project that they are personally interested in and therefore passionate about. This policy has famously resulted in products such as Gmail and Google Earth's flight simulator software. But beyond the hype surrounding Google's management style and how it leads to inventive thinking, it's helpful to see how individual Googlers themselves think of this concept, as evident on their blogs and in their own words. Dave Burke, an engineering director who works on Google's Android phone operating system, described the policy in a Google blog post earlier this year as "my license to innovate." Just working at a place like Google, with its free food, vast resources, ambitious managers and talented co-workers might not be enough to spark the desired innovation. A culture where personal passions matter enough to fuel a corporate policy, more than the policy itself, is the management strategy to emulate.

????Organizations of all sizes can encourage everyone, from C-level leaders to junior hires, to pursue their convictions. And they don't have to be of the cheerleading variety. In fact, it can be helpful on many levels for managers to pay attention to employees' passionate responses to projects, products, or services that are not working. At frog, for example, a lot of people were complaining about an internal tool we used for performance reviews -- how cumbersome the software was, how time-consuming the process was to enter text. (Sound familiar?) So, managers paid attention to this heated chatter and embraced it. Clearly, if so many people had such strong opinions about this tool, perhaps something was wrong with it. That's when I suggested that if our employees felt that it wasn't the right tool for us, why not propose an improvement? One designer stepped up to the challenge, and created an alternative to the performance review software in question.

????The exercise showed our teams that we are the kind of company that listens to employees, pays attention to the intensity of their interests, and is not afraid to take risks by channeling that intensity. So what we've learned at frog is that an employee-first management policy is about creating a culture that offers the opportunity for everyone to voice their opinions all the way to senior executives, at town-hall-style meetings in person, or on company-wide quarterly calls. This way we can also identify employees who have something to say, who might be able to offer fresh ways to improve how we do business, and whose opinions are so formed that they are not afraid to share them in a company-wide arena.

????Conviction-driven thinkers on all levels of an organization, from the C-suite to executive assistants, want to share their specific visions more than they seek fame or power. They don't just think they have a good idea, but they believe passionately that their concept is worth making real. The beauty of these types of thinkers (and doers) is that they can explain why they want to develop the products they're developing, and why they want to launch initiatives that they're launching—both internally and to the world. Even when their ideas might not be the most original (remember, the Kindle was not the first e-reader; the iPod was not the first MP3 player; Google was not the first search engine; Facebook was not the first social network), their passion and their vision on how to improve the world or even the everyday quality of life in your company's workspace are likely focused. They are likely engaged. As a result, they can be very persuasive. Such a mixture of focus, engagement, and persuasion, more than creativity alone, is what brings ideas to market, and also to the right audiences at the right time.

????Doreen Lorenzo (@doreenl) is the president of global innovation firm frog and an executive vice president and general manager of the Aricent Group, frog's parent company. Doreen drives frog's company strategy and oversees its worldwide operations. During her 14 years with the company, she has been instrumental in re-structuring the company, taking it from a traditional design boutique to becoming one of the world's foremost global innovation firms, securing broad-based arrangements with an array of Fortune 500 clients. She serves as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies, 2011-2012.