Ken Auletta is his book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It”, quotes Elliott Schrage “One can make the argument that the genes of technological Innovation are frequently in conflict with emotional intelligence. Successful technological innovation is all about disruption. Effective emotional intelligence is all about collaboration…”

Perhaps I would add a third realm of expertise – Strategic Business Awareness. And perhaps I would say that in order to succeed over time an organization needs to attract and value and learn to integrate and balance all three of these aspects.

All of us know and have seen the awesome power of Technological Innovators who see and know how to build a product that addresses a market gap or shift. We fund those guys! But we also know that their success comes in part from “brute force” and the refusal to quit while they “iterate” successive implementations of their idea until they reach the one that will sell.

Even at the beginning, the creative entrepreneur needs to work with someone who can add the Strategic Business Awareness to craft a business model around the technology idea. Sometimes the business mind is resident in the company – other times it comes in the form of a venture capitalist or industry expert on the Board who can work with the entrepreneur. Over time, this “voice of reason” may carry more weight and take on more of the “operational” responsibilities of running the company in a CEO or COO role.

Unfortunately, these two skills are seldom resident in the same mind – not because they can’t be, but because one does rise from the act of challenging the current state, from the need to birth something that exists only in the mind of the entrepreneur. The other comes from an ability to abstract and “tweak” proven dynamics of the market. The challenge for the organization, then, is to make sure that the need for both areas of expertise is acknowledged and valued from the beginning.

Hence the need for the third realm – the Emotional Intelligence. Over time, any successful organization needs to learn to solve problems by unraveling the emotional context that keeps people from joining behind a common plan, then by clearly articulating and reinforcing a common path. These activities require someone who understands and is comfortable working the “squishy” dynamics that occur whenever humans come together.

Perhaps this skill co-exists with either the Technological Innovator or the Strategic Business mind. Sometimes it has to be cultivated first from either an internal or external party who can help the team learn how to recognize and manage their dynamics. But either way, this ability is critical to knitting a team together over the long term and teaching them to maximize the contributions of each.

So rather than seeing these factors – Technological Innovation, Strategic Business Awareness and Emotional Intelligence — as mutually exclusive, I see them as all three critical to the success of a technology company over time. The challenge is to find and bring together all three – and teach them to acknowledge and cultivate their interdependence.