Most people believe that creative genius is a predetermined personality trait reserved for only a gifted few. Tharp - an award-winning choreographer who has revolutionized dance in our time - firmly rejects that notion. "Everyone can be creative," she says, "but you have to prepare for it with routine." The winner of a MacArthur fellowship, a Tony award, and two Emmys, Tharp has been the artistic force behind her own dance company, Broadway shows, and TV productions, and has created choreography for movies (including Hair and Amadeus) and leading ballet companies around the world. In this conversation with senior editor Diane Coutu, Tharp shares her thoughts about what it takes to achieve creative breakthroughs: hardheaded practicality, discipline, and ruthlessness about the work. She is unsentimental in her advice to aspiring innovators who worry that they don't have the right stuff: Get over yourself. Get angry, throw a tantrum - just do whatever it takes to get moving, and stop wasting time. Creativity is the result of habit, hard work, and constantly pursuing new challenges. Don't get hung up on originality or on failure; if you never fail, you'll stagnate. Mentors may help guide you to your goals, but don't choose people who will hold your hand. Choose mentors who can teach you, and invent them if you have to. In her no-nonsense way, Tharp also talks about her commitment to being uncompromising in her work, even when it exacted a price (such as forgone vacations and personal relationships) or was otherwise painful (when it involved firing extraordinary people). "It's a terrible analogy, but when it comes to your work, you have a war to win," she says. "Men are going to die."

In the business world, "creativity" has become the latest buzzword. How to attract, nurture, and direct the extraordinarily talented people who will come up with the next Lipitor, Sony Walkman, or iPod is an enduring topic among businesspeople. As the director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, Daniel J. Socolow has considerable experience with the process of rooting out creativity. In this conversation with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, he describes how recipients of the "genius grant"--half a million dollars with no strings attached--are chosen. As significant as the money is, the recognition that comes with a fellowship may be more so. MacArthur grants provide powerful validation of the fellows' work, Socolow says, and that validation opens doors for people, whatever the field. Although the program keeps a lookout for entrepreneurs who are on the brink of major new advances, he believes that the market does a good job of rewarding the best ideas in the business. Replicating the MacArthur model in a company would entail giving some employees unlimited time and lots of money to follow their own inclinations--not very feasible in most contexts. Nevertheless, the program has learned a lesson that may be valuable for business: The kind of creativity that leads to important breakthroughs is extremely hard to find. And, says Socolow, exceptionally creative people aren't always the obvious suspects, who may simply be good at promoting themselves: "Listen to others and look in the least likely places ...Extend your networks and try to get information from as many people as possible, just as we do."

Three years ago, consultants Laurence Prusak and Thomas H. Davenport asked prominent management thinkers to name their gurus and reported the results in HBR. James G. March appeared on more lists than any other person except Peter Drucker. A professor emeritus in management, sociology, political science, and education at Stanford University, March has taught courses in subjects as diverse as organizational psychology, behavioral economics, leadership, rules for killing people, friendship, computer simulation, and statistics. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering contributions to organization and management theory. March's accomplishments in that field, and in many others, have conferred on him an almost unprecedented reputation as a rigorous scholar and a deep source of wisdom. As University of Chicago professor John Padgett wrote in the journal Contemporary Sociology, "March's influence, unlike that of any of his peers, is not limited to any possible subset of the social science disciplines; it is pervasive." March approaches thought aesthetically; he cares that ideas have "some form of elegance or grace or surprise." His poetic sensibility can be felt in the metaphors he has created over the years--the "garbage can theory" of organizational choice, for instance, and the "hot-stove effect" in learning. In this edited interview with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, March shares his thinking on aesthetics, leadership, the role of folly, and the irrelevance of relevance when it comes to the pursuit of ideas. He also comments on the fundamental differences between academic and experiential knowledge, underscoring the need for both.

We have to admire salespeople's resilience in the face of endless rejection, their certainty that things will work out in the end. At the same time, we're repelled by what their job can do to them. (Think Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross, dramatic portraits of hollowness and moral capitulation.) Just what type of person goes into sales, and how do salespeople cope with their jobs? For insight into these questions, HBR approached G. Clotaire Rapaille, a psychologist, anthropologist, and marketing guru who researches the impact of culture on business and markets. In particular, he studies archetypes--the underlying patterns in psychology that illuminate the human condition--and shows organizations how to use those patterns to sharpen their sales and marketing efforts. He points out, for instance, that a keen understanding of the Great Mother archetype has helped Procter & Gamble achieve great success with Pantene hair products. By promoting nutrition--and reminding consumers that hair must be nurtured--the Pantene brand appeals to the maternal instinct. Rapaille says that salespeople have their own archetype: They are Happy Losers who relish rejection and actually seek out jobs that provide opportunities to be turned down. That, of course, has implications for how they should be managed. Rapaille's research shows that the leading motivator in sales is not money; it's the thrill of the chase. "Hold huge company meetings where you give a salesperson the gold medal of rejection," he advises. "Jonathan sold 500,000 computers last month, but he was rejected 5 million times! It may sound ludicrous, but this is the way to get fire in the belly of your sales force--particularly in America, where beating the odds is highly prized."

It's hard to find a better exemplar for competition than chess. Even people who have scant knowledge of the game instinctively recognize that chess is unusual in terms of its intellectual complexity and the strategic demands it places on players. Can strategists learn anything from chess players about what it takes to win? To find out, HBR senior editor Diane L. Coutu talked with Garry Kasparov, the world's No.1 player since 1984. Kasparov believes that success in both chess and business is very much a question of psychological advantage; the complexity of the game demands that players rely heavily on their instincts and on gamesmanship. In this wide-ranging interview, Kasparov explores the power of chess as a model for business competition; the balance that chess players strike between intuition and analysis; the significance of his loss to IBM's chess-playing computer, Deep Blue; and how his legendary rivalry with Anatoly Karpov, Kasparov's predecessor as World Chess Champion, affected his own success. Kasparov also shares his solution to what he calls the champion's dilemma, a question for all world masters, whether they are in business, sports, or chess: Where does a virtuoso go after he has accomplished everything he's ever wanted to, even beyond his wildest imagination?

"It's worse than I thought....She's completely lost her mind," says Harry Beecham, the CEO of blue chip management consultancy Pierce and Co. The perplexed executive was in a hotel suite with his wife in Amsterdam, the latest stop on his regular trek to dozens of Pierce offices worldwide. In his hand was a sheaf of paper--the same message sent over and over again by his star employee and protegee Katharina Waldburg. The end of the world is coming, she warned. "Someone is going to die." Harry wouldn't have expected this sort of behavior from Katharina. After graduating with distinction from Oxford, she made a name for herself by single-handedly building Pierce's organizational behavior practice. At 27, she's poised to become the youngest partner ever elected at the firm. But Harry can't ignore the faxes in his hand. Or the stream of consciousness e-mails Katharina's been sending to one of the directors in Pierce's Berlin office--mostly gibberish but potentially disastrous to Katharina's reputation if they ever got out. Harry also can't dismiss reports from Roland Fuoroli, manager of the Berlin office, of a vicious verbal exchange Katharina had with him, or of an "over the top" lunch date Katharina had with one of Pierce's clients in which she was explaining the alphabet's role in the creation of the universe. Harry is planning to talk to Katharina when he gets to Berlin. What should he say? And will it be too late? In R0404A and R0404Z, four commentators offer their advice on this fictional case study. They are Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry and a co-author of Manic-Depressive Illness; David E. Meen, a former director at McKinsey & Co.; Norman Pearlstine, the editor-in-chief at Time Inc.; and Richard Primus, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan.

"It's worse than I thought....She's completely lost her mind," says Harry Beecham, the CEO of blue chip management consultancy Pierce and Co. The perplexed executive was in a hotel suite with his wife in Amsterdam, the latest stop on his regular trek to dozens of Pierce offices worldwide. In his hand was a sheaf of paper--the same message sent over and over again by his star employee and protegee Katharina Waldburg. The end of the world is coming, she warned. "Someone is going to die." Harry wouldn't have expected this sort of behavior from Katharina. After graduating with distinction from Oxford, she made a name for herself by single-handedly building Pierce's organizational behavior practice. At 27, she's poised to become the youngest partner ever elected at the firm. But Harry can't ignore the faxes in his hand. Or the stream of consciousness e-mails Katharina's been sending to one of the directors in Pierce's Berlin office--mostly gibberish but potentially disastrous to Katharina's reputation if they ever got out. Harry also can't dismiss reports from Roland Fuoroli, manager of the Berlin office, of a vicious verbal exchange Katharina had with him, or of an "over the top" lunch date Katharina had with one of Pierce's clients in which she was explaining the alphabet's role in the creation of the universe. Harry is planning to talk to Katharina when he gets to Berlin. What should he say? And will it be too late? Four commentators offer their advice in this fictional case study. They are Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry and a co-author of Manic-Depressive Illness; David E. Meen, a former director at McKinsey & Co.; Norman Pearlstine, the editor-in-chief at Time Inc.; and Richard Primus, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan.

"It's worse than I thought....She's completely lost her mind," says Harry Beecham, the CEO of blue chip management consultancy Pierce and Co. The perplexed executive was in a hotel suite with his wife in Amsterdam, the latest stop on his regular trek to dozens of Pierce offices worldwide. In his hand was a sheaf of paper--the same message sent over and over again by his star employee and protegee Katharina Waldburg. The end of the world is coming, she warned. "Someone is going to die." Harry wouldn't have expected this sort of behavior from Katharina. After graduating with distinction from Oxford, she made a name for herself by single-handedly building Pierce's organizational behavior practice. At 27, she's poised to become the youngest partner ever elected at the firm. But Harry can't ignore the faxes in his hand. Or the stream of consciousness e-mails Katharina's been sending to one of the directors in Pierce's Berlin office--mostly gibberish but potentially disastrous to Katharina's reputation if they ever got out. Harry also can't dismiss reports from Roland Fuoroli, manager of the Berlin office, of a vicious verbal exchange Katharina had with him, or of an "over the top" lunch date Katharina had with one of Pierce's clients in which she was explaining the alphabet's role in the creation of the universe. Harry is planning to talk to Katharina when he gets to Berlin. What should he say? And will it be too late? In R0404A and R0404Z, four commentators offer their advice on this fictional case study. They are Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry and a co-author of Manic-Depressive Illness; David E. Meen, a former director at McKinsey & Co.; Norman Pearlstine, the editor-in-chief at Time Inc.; and Richard Primus, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan.

HBR's editors searched for the best new ideas related to the practice of management and came up with a collection that is as diverse as it is provocative. The 2004 HBR List includes emergent concepts from biology, network science, management theory, and more. A few highlights: Richard Florida wonders why U.S. society doesn't seem to be thinking about the flow of people as the key to America's advantage in the "creative age." Diane L. Coutu describes how the revolution in neurosciences will have a major impact on business. Clayton M. Christensen explains the law of conservation of attractive profits: When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products usually emerges at an adjacent stage. Daniel H. Pink explains why the master of fine arts is the new MBA. Herminia Ibarra describes how companies can get the most out of managers returning from leadership-development programs. Iqbal Quadir suggests a radical fix for the third world's trade problems: Get the World Bank to lend to rich countries so that there are resources for retraining workers in dying industries.

Although a number of business scholars have explored the psychology of executives, Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries has made the analysis of CEOs his life's work. In this article, Kets de Vries, a psychoanalyst, author, and Insead professor, draws on three decades of study to describe the psychological profile of successful CEOs. He explores senior executives' vulnerabilities, which are often intensified by followers' attempts to manipulate their leaders. Leaders, he says, have an uncanny ability to awaken transferential processes--in which people transfer the dynamics of past relationships onto present interactions--among their employees and even in themselves. These processes can present themselves in a number of ways, sometimes negatively. What's more, many top executives, being middle-aged, suffer from depression. Midlife prompts a reappraisal of career identity, and by the time a leader is a CEO, an existential crisis is often imminent. Not all CEOs are psychologically unhealthy, of course. Healthy leaders are talented in self-observation and self-analysis, Kets de Vries says. The best are highly motivated to spend time on self-reflection. Their lives are in balance, they can play, they are creative and inventive, and they have the capacity to be nonconformist. "Those who accept the madness in themselves may be the healthiest leaders of all," he concludes.

For most of the last 50 years, technology knew its place. It's very different today. Technology is not only ubiquitous but has become highly intrusive as well. On the Internet, people invent imaginary identities in virtual chat rooms. Children are growing up with interactive toy animals. If we want to be sure we'll like who we've become in 50 years, we need to take a closer look at the psychological effects of current and future technologies. The smartest people in technology have already started. Universities like MIT and Caltech have been pouring millions of dollars into researching what happens when technology and humanity meet. To learn more about this research, HBR senior editor Diane L. Coutu spoke with one of the field's most distinguished scholars--Sherry Turkle, MIT's Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the author of Life on the Screen, which explores how the Internet is changing the way we define ourselves. In a conversation with Coutu, Turkle discusses the psychological dynamics that can develop between people and their high-tech toys, describes ways in which machines might substitute for managers, and explains how technology is redefining what it means to be human. She warns that relatively small differences in technology design can have disproportionate effects on how humans relate to technology, to one another, and to themselves.

Most of us see the organizations we operate in--our schools or companies, for instance--as monolithic and predictable, subjecting us to deadening routines and demanding from us dehumanizing conformity. But companies are more unpredictable and more alive than we imagine, according to Karl Weick, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on organizational behavior. Weick says executives can learn a lot about managing the unexpected from organizations that can't afford any surprises in the workplace--nuclear power plants, firefighting units, or hospital emergency rooms, for instance. In this edited conversation with HBR Senior Editor Diane Coutu, Weick examines the characteristics of these high-reliability organizations (HROs) and suggests ways that other organizations can implement their work practices and philosophies. The key difference between HROs and other companies is the mindfulness with which people in most HROs react to even very weak signs that some kind of change or danger is approaching. Weick contrasts this kind of watchful updating at HROs with Ford's inability to pick up on weak signs in the 1970s that there were potentially lethal problems with the design of the Pinto gas tank.

Americans are outraged at the greediness of Wall Street analysts, dot-com entrepreneurs and, most of all, chief executive officers. How could Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski use company funds to throw his wife a million-dollar birthday bash on an Italian island? How could Enron's Ken Lay sell thousands of shares of his company's once high-flying stock just before it crashed, leaving employees with nothing? Even America's most popular domestic guru, Martha Stewart, is suspected of having her hand in the cookie jar. To some extent, our outrage may be justified, writes HBR senior editor Diane Coutu. And yet, it's easy to forget that just a couple years ago these same people were lauded as heroes. It could easily be argued that it was public indulgence in corporate money lust that largely created the mess we're now in. It's time to take a hard look at greed, both in its general form and in its peculiarly American incarnation, says Coutu. If Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan was correct in telling Congress that "infectious greed" contaminated U.S. business, then we need to try to understand its causes--and how the average American may have contributed to it. Why did so many of us fall prey to greed? Can we be sure it won't happen again?

Recognizing and anticipating change in industry patterns is a core competence for companies today, allowing managers to capitalize on opportunities before they are apparent to others. Yet, companies are far from mastering how to recognize such patterns, especially at the strategic level, where information is usually less profuse and much less precise. Pattern recognition is not a new skill, though, at least not to people outside the business world. Since antiquity, naturalists have relied on their ability to spot patterns to make sense of their surroundings. Surprisingly, there is much businesspeople can learn from bird watching in terms of the cognitive demands pattern recognition requires. To learn more, HBR spoke with David Sibley, perhaps the nation's foremost bird watcher and illustrator, and Julia Yoshida, a birder since 1965 and a physician at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts. Sibley explains how expert birders draw on a wealth of tacit knowledge built up over the years to make identifications in a matter of seconds: "Once you've mastered common patterns, the real trick is to educate yourself about where discrepancies are most likely to appear--and to concentrate your attention on those areas." Although so fast as to be almost unconscious, the process he describes seems to be as methodical as one of Yoshida's medical diagnoses. According to Yoshida, "I don't think it's a eureka moment at all. It's a methodical process."

In some languages, the word for "business" is the same as the word for "negotiation." That's not really surprising: Every interaction--with customers, suppliers, and even partners and investors--entails negotiation. And some involve very high stakes: The breakdown in negotiations between Hewlett-Packard's management and its founding families, for instance, put the company's future in doubt. Dominick Misino is a man who knows about negotiating when the stakes are at their very highest. As a hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, Misino successfully persuaded the hijacker of Lufthansa Flight 592 to lay down his gun and turn himself in. Misino spent the last 6 years of his career as a primary negotiator, handling more than 200 incidents and never losing a life. Since his retirement in 1995, he has taught negotiating skills to law enforcement officials, military personnel, and business executives. Negotiation, he says, is really a series of small agreements, and he is adept at orchestrating those agreements from the start so that his adversary learns to trust him and come around to his point of view. In vivid and sometimes hair-raising detail, Misino demonstrates how he gets criminals to trust police officers enough to refrain from harming innocent parties and give themselves up. Many of the techniques he describes are surprisingly applicable to business negotiations, where the parties may seem equally intractable and failure is not an option.

Why do some people bounce back from life's hardships while others despair? HBR senior editor Diane Coutu looks at the nature of individual and organizational resilience, issues that have gained special urgency in light of the recent terrorist attacks, war, and recession. In the business arena, resilience has found its way onto the list of qualities sought in employees. As one of Coutu's interviewees puts it, "More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails." Theories abound about what produces resilience, but three fundamental characteristics seem to set resilient people and companies apart from others. The first characteristic is the capacity to accept and face down reality. In looking hard at reality, we prepare ourselves to act in ways that allow us to endure and survive hardships. Second, resilient people and organizations possess an ability to find meaning in some aspects of life. And values are just as important as meaning; value systems at resilient companies change very little over the long haul and are used as scaffolding in times of trouble. The third building block of resilience is the ability to improvise. Within an arena of personal capabilities or company rules, the ability to solve problems without the usual or obvious tools is a great strength.

Despite all of the time, money, and energy that executives pour into corporate change programs, the stark reality is that few companies ever succeed in genuinely reinventing themselves. That's because the people at those companies rarely master the art of transformational learning--that is, eagerly challenging deeply held assumptions about a company's processes and, in response, altering their thoughts and actions. Instead, most people just end up doing the same old things in superficially tweaked ways. Why is transformational learning so hard to achieve? HBR senior editor Diane Coutu explores this question with psychologist and MIT professor Edgar Schein, a world-renowned expert on organizational development. In sharp contrast to the optimistic rhetoric that permeates the debate on corporate learning and change, Schein is cautious about what companies can and cannot accomplish. Corporate culture can change, he says, but this kind of learning takes time, and it isn't fun. In this article, he describes two basic types of anxiety--learning anxiety and survival anxiety--that drive radical relearning in organizations. Schein's theories spring from his early research on how American prisoners of war in Korea were brainwashed by their captors. Heavy socialization is back in style in U.S. corporations today, Schein says, even if no one is calling it that.

There was a time when CEOs weren't celebrities, but that was before Jack Welch. Over the past 20 years, Welch, more than any other business leader, has changed the way people view the role of the CEO. There was no General Electric separate from Welch and no Welch separate from General Electric. Through his bold and sweeping reinvention of the company--thanks in no small part to the force of his personality--Welch created the CEO not just as public figure but as icon. Indeed, Welch's legacy and life have been analyzed, lauded, and excoriated by the public and the media alike. Small wonder, then, that his recent book--Jack: Straight from the Gut--has garnered the same degree of publicity. In this frank and wide-ranging interview with HBR senior editors Harris Collingwood and Diane Coutu, Welch replies to his critics and offers a detailed look at his theory and practice of business. Candidly answering questions about his personal style and his upbringing, Welch also gives readers a detailed glimpse of the practices that shape the distinctive GE culture: the meetings, the "deep dives" and, most important, the transmission of powerful ideas throughout GE's far-flung organization.

Last fall, the United States was brutally thrust into a new and dangerous world. As the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed and the Pentagon burned, the horrible reality of terrorism seared the American consciousness. It touched more than the victims and their families; everyone who sat transfixed before the horrific images on TV lived through the trauma. In a sense, we were all eyewitnesses, and we must all cope with feelings of anger, stress, and anxiety. That poses a huge immediate challenge for business, because it is largely in the workplace--where we spend so many of our waking hours--that we will confront these emotions. What responsibility does a company bear for the mental well-being of its workforce? If companies help employees deal with depression and anxiety in the wake of terrorist acts, doesn't that put mental health care on the business agenda? To answer these questions, HBR senior editor Diane Coutu talked with Dr. Steven Hyman, the former director of the National Institute for Mental Health. In this interview, he suggests that September 11, 2001, may come to be seen as a tipping point--the moment when managers started to think about dealing with mental health issues on a regular basis.

In the last 20 years, business has become the dominant institution in American society, in many respects usurping the role once played by religion. As such, business has infiltrated every aspect of our lives--including the hearts and minds of our children. For many, it is an unsettling force. The wild competitiveness of business today compels managers to be constantly available for customers and colleagues, inevitably reducing the time and energy they can devote to their kids. Although stories of the impact of business life on children rarely appear in the business press, debate rages in the broader community, and many parents fear that their children may be paying the price for their success. Is that price too high? In an in-depth interview with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, writer and child psychoanalyst Robert Coles speaks to that question. Perhaps surprisingly, given the fashion for criticizing the way children are raised today, Coles is optimistic about the next generation. He rejects the stereotype of the hopelessly spoiled rich kid, instead emphasizing children's extraordinary adaptability and ingenuity. "Wealth can weaken some children in certain ways," he says, "unless parents know how to ask of them as well as give to them." In this interview, Cole also examines the role of working women in parenting, explores the difference for children between healthy and narcissistic entitlement, and suggests how we might listen to our children better. "Our children are wonderfully aware and awake," Coles says. "If only we'd stop and listen to the spiritual reflections and questions of our sons and daughters, we might learn something very important about them and about ourselves."