Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap Harvard Business Review (Sept. 2004): Presenter: Jim Williams, Summer 2011

Dorothy Leonard Dorothy Leonard*, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita, joined the Harvard faculty in 1983 after teaching for three years at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has taught MBA courses in managerial leadership, corporate capabilities, new product and process design, technology strategy and innovation management. At Harvard, M.I.T., and for corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, and 3M, Professor Leonard has conducted executive courses on a wide range of innovation-related topics such as cross-functional coordination during new product development, technology transfer and knowledge management. She has initiated and served as faculty chair for executive education programs such as Leveraging Knowledge for the 21st Century, Leading Product Development, and Enhancing Corporate Creativity. She also served as a Director of Research for the Harvard Business School and Director of Research and Knowledge Programs for Harvard Business School's non-profit organization, HBS Interactive. (

Dorothy Leonard’s research Professor Leonard's major research interests and consulting expertise relate to managing knowledge for innovation and stimulating creativity in group settings. She has consulted with and taught about these topics for governments (e.g., Sweden, Jamaica) and major corporations (e.g., IBM, Kodak). She served on the corporate Board of Directors for American Management Systems for twelve years and for Guy Gannett Communications for three years in both cases until the company was merged or acquired. Her numerous writings appear in academic journals (e.g., "Core Capabilities and Core Rigidities in New Product Development" awarded Best Paper by Strategic Management Journal for sustained impact on the profession), practitioner journals (e.g., "Deep Smarts" in Harvard Business Review) and books on technology management (e.g., "Guiding Visions" in The Perpetual Enterprise Machine). In addition, Professor Leonard has written dozens of field-based cases used in business school classrooms around the world. Her book, Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation, was published in hardback in 1995 by Harvard Business School Publishing, reissued in paperback in 1998, and has been translated into numerous languages. Professor Leonard's book, When Sparks Fly: Igniting Group Creativity, (co-authored with Walter Swap) was published September, 1999 by Harvard Business School Press. Also widely translated, it has been reissued in paperback in 2005 and was awarded Best Book on Creativity by the European Association for Creativity and Innovation. Her latest book (with Walter Swap) is: Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom, published in January, Before obtaining her Ph.D. from Stanford University, she worked in Southeast Asia for ten years. (

Walter Swap Walter Swap is Professor of Psychology, emeritus, and former Chairman of the Psychology Department at Tufts University. Dr. Swap served for nine years as the Dean of the Colleges, responsible for all aspects of undergraduate academic life at Tufts. He is the author of Group Decision Making, and has co- authored several articles and books with Dorothy Leonard, including When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity in Groups (1999) and Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom, which will be published in November In addition, he has authored numerous book chapters and articles in professional journals, including The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Social Psychology Bulletin, on topics including group dynamics, attitude change, altruism, and personality theory. (

Key questions: How is knowledge passed from one person to another in an organization? How do organizations take advantage of those with “deep smarts” to pass their knowledge and know how to others?

“deep smarts” What it is NOT: Raw brainpower Emotional intelligence Being old or around for a long time Not philosophical, “but as close to wisdom as business gets” What it is: “the stuff that produces that mysterious quality, good judgment” (89)

“deeply smart” people... “see the whole picture and yet zoom in on a specific problem others haven’t been able to diagnose” (89) “make the right decision, at the right level, with the right people” Have essential knowledge to an organization, which “cannot progress without it” Have “know who” in addition to “know how” Are compelling leaders Do not leave their knowledge behind unless ways are in place for them to pass it along to others

Leonard and Swap argue that “you will be a more effective manager if you understand what deep smarts are, how they are cultivated, and how they can be transferred from one person to another.” (89)

Types of “deep smarts” Technical: the example of the scientist who single-handedly redesigned a missile Managerial: harder to identify: the example of Intuit CEO Bill Campbell arguing passionately against fatalism on his board

Moving toward “deep smarts” Figure 1, top of p. 93 “deep smarts” are experiential; over time, employees develop an “experience repertoire” “deep smarts” are a combination of experience and intuition, described as a gut feeling when really a form of “gut knowledge” Being receptive to new knowledge: ready to catch. The sink-or-swim approach is seldom effective. Better to be systematic with the creation of receptors within frameworks and with tools to tie experiences together.

Table 1: Guided Experience Versus Other Types of Learning—guided experience and rules Table 2: Characteristics and Limitations of Deep Smarts

Techniques for gaining and passing along “deep smarts,” related to my experience as an oral historian Guided Practice Guided Observation Guided Problem Solving Guided Experimentation

Sounds like it takes a lot of time and costs too much? Leonard and Swap argue that corporations will spend millions on training and data repositories yet will not invest in “deep smarts.” They are “convinced that guided experience is the only way to cultivate deep smarts—and that managers need to be realistic about how much tacit, context-specific knowledge can be created or transferred through other means.” (99)

Two simultaneous benefits of guided experience: “a lasting asset in the form of transferred know-how” “delivery of a new business process, product idea, or capability”

Guided experience increases value exponentially Promotes dual-purpose learning Builds on all that we know about how people accumulate and retain knowledge

The EXL Scholars Program: experiential learning in the form of practica, internships, research, study abroad, student teaching, and service learning.

Responses to “deep smarts” and implications for other areas Harvard Business Review letters and responses Qureshis, S, Briggs, RO, and Hlupc, V (2006). Value creation from intellectual capital: Convergence of knowledge management and collaboration in the intellectual bandwidth model. Group Decision and Negotiation, 15 (3), Heimeriks, Koen H, Geert Duysters, and Wim Vanhaverbeke (2007). Learning mechanisms and differential performance in alliance portfolios. Strategic Organization, 5 (4),

More implications Becker, Franklin (2007). Organizational ecology and knowledge networks. California Management Review, 49 (2), 42+. McNichols, Debby (2010). Optimal knowledge transfer methods: a Generation X perspective. Journal of Knowledge Management, 14 (1),

More implications (2) Goffin, Keith; Koners, Ursula; Baxter, David; van der Hoven, Chris (2010). Managing lessons learned and tacit knowledge in new product development. Research-Technology Management, 53 (4),