Years ago, we had a manager named Ania running one of our publishing operations. She was well-liked, diligent, and responsible. Still, we felt the business needed a more creative spark, so we brought in a rising executive to take her place. Ania transitioned out gracefully and left the company on good terms.

Things turned out well. Our business thrived and Ania became a highly sought-after interior decorator, renowned for her creativity. The problem wasn’t that she lacked any creative ability. The problem was that we weren’t giving her the type of challenges that excited her. While she languished in our business, she thrived in a different environment.

The truth is that there is no such thing as a “creative personality.” You set the conditions for the people in your organization to be creative. But as you set those conditions, you also narrow possibilities, making the environment fertile ground for some, but barren for others. Every leader needs to learn to make those choices. Culture matters. You need to shape it with care.

Not unlike Ania, Chester Carlson didn’t quite fit in. Unsatisfied with his work at the patent department at Bell Labs, he wrote down hundreds of ideas, the vast majority of which never amounted to anything. He was eventually fired and went through a few more jobs after that. Chester was a man looking for his place in the world.

There was one idea, however, that he kept coming back to. He worked on it for years, even while holding down a day job and going to law school at night. When his wife got tired of the putrid smells and explosions he made mixing chemicals in the kitchen, he moved his experiments to a second-floor room in a house his mother-in-law owned.

Eventually, he conjured up a working prototype in 1939, but it was far from a viable product. He continued to tinker and, eventually, teamed up with the Haloid corporation in 1946. Together, they refined his product further, but it still cost nearly 10 times more than competitive machines. They tried to interest the great companies of the day—Kodak, IBM and GE—but all demurred.

Much like Chester........

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