The flaring of intellectual outliers: an organizational interpretation of the generation of novelty in the RAND Corporation
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Authors
Augier, Mie
March, James C.
Marshall, Andrew W,
Subjects
Organizational evolution and change
Organization and management theory
Archival research
Organizational processes
Deviance
Innovation
Organization and management theory
Archival research
Organizational processes
Deviance
Innovation
Advisors
Date of Issue
2015
Date
Publisher
Informs
Language
Abstract
Much of intellectual history is punctuated by the flaring of intellectual outliers, small groups of thinkers who briefly, but decisively, influence the development of ideas, technologies, policies, or worldviews. To understand the flaring of intellectual outliers, we use archival and interview data from the RAND Corporation after the Second World War. We focus on five factors important to the RAND experience: (1) a belief in fundamental research as a source of practical ideas, (2) a culture of optimistic urgency, (3) the solicitation of renegade ambition, (4) the recruitment of intellectual cronies, and (5) the facilitation of the combinatorics of variety. To understand the subsequent decline of intellectual outliers at RAND, we note that success yields a sense of competence, endurance in a competitive world, and the opportunity and
inclination to grow. Self-confidence, endurance, and growth produce numerous positive consequences for an organization; but for the most part, they undermine variety. Outliers and the conditions that produce them are not favored by their environments. Engineering solutions to this problem involve extending time and space horizons, providing false information about the likelihoods of positive returns from exploration, buffering exploratory activities from the pressures of efficiency, and protecting exploration from analysis by connecting it to dictates of identities.
Type
Article
Description
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2014.0962
Series/Report No
Department
Business & Public Policy (GSBPP)
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
22 p.
Citation
M. Augier, J.G. March, A.W. Marshall, "The flaring of intellectual outliers: an organizational interpretation of the generation of novelty in the Rand Corporation," Organizational Science, v.26, no.4 (July-August 2015), pp.1140-1161.
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.