Great leaders of innovation don’t fit the conventional mold of “good” leadership. They’re not visionaries who set direction and inspire others to follow. Instead, they create the context in which others are both willing and able to innovate. As one leader said, “My job is to set the stage, not to perform on it.”

This is the key insight gleaned by the authors of Collective Genius who, led by Harvard leadership scholar Linda Hill, spent a decade studying leaders of innovative firms in the US, Europe, India, and Asia, including such companies as Pixar, Google, Volkswagen, HCL Technologies, IBM, and the Sungjoo Group.

In chapters that take you deep into the worlds of these extraordinary individuals, Collective Genius reveals how they think and what they do to unleash and then harness the “collective genius” of those they lead.

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She is the faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative and has chaired numerous HBS Executive Education programs, including the Young Presidents' Organization Presidents' Seminar and the High Potentials Leadership Program. She was course-head during the development of the new Leadership and Organizational Behavior MBA required course. She is the co-author, with Kent Lineback, of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader and Breakthrough Leadership, a blended cohort-based program that helps organizations transform midlevel managers into more effective leaders. Breakthrough Leadership was the winner of the 2013 Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology. The book was included in the Wall Street Journal as one of the “Five Business Books to Read for Your Career in 2011.” She is also the author of Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership (2nd Edition). In 2014, Professor Hill co-authored a book entitled Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. It features thick descriptions of exceptional leaders of innovation in a wide range of industries—from information technology to law to design—and geographies—from the US and Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Business Insider named Collective Genius one of “The 20 Best Business Books” in summer 2014. Her books are available in multiple languages.