Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at 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. Hill’s consulting and executive education activities have been in the areas of leadership development, talent management, leading change and innovation, implementing global strategies, and managing cross-organizational relationships. She has worked with organizations worldwide, including General Electric, Reed Elsevier, Accenture, Pfizer, IBM, MasterCard, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, the National Bank of Kuwait, AREVA, and the Economist. Hill is the coauthor, with Kent Lineback, of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, which the Wall Street Journal named one of “Five Best Business Books to Read for Your Career in 2011.” Hill is also the author of Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership (2nd Edition), as well as course modules, award-winning multimedia management development programs, and numerous HBR articles. In 2013 she was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world. Hill is currently a member of the boards of State Street Corporation, Eaton Corporation, and Harvard Business Publishing. She is a trustee of The Bridgespan Group and the Art Center College of Design, an advisor for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund USA, and a special representative to the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College. She is also on the advisory board of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program. Hill holds a PhD in behavioral sciences and an MA in educational psychology, both from the University of Chicago. She received a BA summa cum laude in psychology from Bryn Mawr College.

On Innovation Navigation, Linda Hill discussed the book she co-authored, The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. She talked with Dave about how to successfully create an organization that can innovate. Being a leader who can create this type of organization requires both the ability to make a group willing to innovate and making a group able to innovate. She gave advice for someone who has just taken a leadership position. The new leader must first, take a step back and look at what innovation in his organization really takes, and he must be a stage setter: more back stage, than front stage.