How Authority Bias Hinders Innovation in the Professional Environment

The authority bias in professional settings often creates invisible barriers to innovation, and history provides us with numerous eloquent examples of this phenomenon.

Take the story of Steve Wozniak, who worked as a rank-and-file engineer at Hewlett-Packard. When he presented the concept of a personal computer to management, the idea was rejected five times. The company didn’t see the potential in this invention, believing that computers should remain large corporate machines. Wozniak had to leave and found Apple with Steve Jobs to realize his idea.

A similar story happened with Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography. As a patent clerk, he knocked on the doors of large companies, including IBM and General Electric, trying to interest them in his invention. More than 20 companies rejected his idea, believing that copying machines would not be in demand. Only a small company, Haloid (later renamed Xerox), risked believing in his invention.

In the scientific field, the example of Barbara McClintock, who discovered jumping genes, is illustrative. Her revolutionary theory of mobile genetic elements was met with distrust and even ridicule by the scientific community. It took almost 30 years for her work to gain recognition, and in 1983 she was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Modern business also provides similar examples. Young programmer Daniel Ek proposed a legal way to distribute music via streaming when the music industry was obsessed with fighting piracy. Many labels rejected his idea, considering it unviable. Today, his creation, Spotify, is the largest music streaming service in the world.

An interesting case is that of Spencer Silver, a 3M engineer who accidentally created an adhesive that stuck, but not very strongly. His idea to use this “failed” adhesive to create sticky notes was not taken seriously for a long time. It took several years and the intervention of his colleague Art Fry to convince management of the invention’s potential. Today, Post-it Notes is a billion-dollar business.

These stories teach us an important lesson: innovation often arises not in the offices of top managers, but in the minds of ordinary employees who directly encounter problems and seek solutions. Companies that create a culture where ideas are valued regardless of the rank of their author gain a significant competitive advantage.

Modern progressive companies are trying to combat this phenomenon by implementing anonymous suggestion systems, creating special innovation labs where hierarchy is intentionally blurred, and organizing internal startup accelerators. For example, Google practices the “20% time” policy, where employees can spend a portion of their working time on their own projects, regardless of their position.

Yet, despite these efforts, the authority bias continues to influence decision-making in organizations. Overcoming this barrier requires not only the right processes but also profound changes in corporate culture, where status and position cease to be the main criteria for evaluating ideas.