Managing research sounds like an oxymoron. How do you manage creativity? How do you manage the creativity of N researchers, where N=1,10,100,...? How do you manage people so that their total output is not just the sum of the individual contributions, but reaches the full potential of the team?

Managing research is not easy and it has many dimensions, so these are difficult questions to answer. But I find an important guiding principle for managing research is aligning passions. Specifically:

• Align the passions of researchers with an important need... which in industrial research is an important business need.
• Align the passions of researchers with their teammates... to get the full potential of the team.

How do you achieve this? First of all, you need to discover what your researchers' passions are. If you know your researchers' passions, then you can be on the lookout for opportunities that match.
Managers: Begin the dialogue. Ask them!
Researchers: Begin the dialogue. Express them! Please don't force your managers to guess, as we'll probably guess wrong.

I found that it's important to let people know that it's okay to bring their passions to work. I have seen employees who are hesitant about bringing their passions to work. They seem to feel guilty about it, thinking that somehow it's wrong.
Managers: Create an environment that encourages researchers to express and align their passions.

Passion may take on different forms, as some people are passionate about a specific topic but flexible about how to achieve it, while others may be flexible on the topic but passionate about how to achieve it. Also, some researchers may not know what his/her passion is, but will be energized by the passion of others. This flexibility and diversity is very good, as it takes many different roles to accomplish a big project so it is important to have people who are flexible on what topic to work on or what role to play. So, by understanding your team members' passions well you can align their work for bigger results.

Passion comes from exposure. So in order to align passion with important (business) needs, it is important for researchers learn what the needs are and the environment in which they can deliver a solution. I think this is best done by giving researchers direct exposure to the business. This allows researchers to creatively figure out how to solve the needs and how to apply their own passions in the solution. Researchers will be more passionate about a solution they helped create.

You can give researchers business exposure by bringing business people to the lab. You can invite them to give talks and have researchers show them their work to get feedback. You can also bring researchers to the business so they can see how the business operates and understand the business pressures and priorities. Then, they will be able to develop solutions that fit within the business' operating environment.

In order to get the benefit of the team, it's also important for researchers to align their passions with their teammates and business partners. This alignment happens by giving people exposure in groups. When researchers are exposed to things at the same time, they can hear each other's questions and gauge each other's interest in solving them. Then, they can help identify solutions that involve the broader team and in turn will lead to greater impact. Once again, researchers will be more passionate about the broader solution if they helped create it.

Closing thoughts: Passion is contagious. Passion aligned with a need is critical. Group passion aligned with an important need is immensely powerful.

So, what do you think about managing research by aligning passions?