IBM: “Don’t Tame the Wild Ducks”
It turns out I’m in good company when it comes to applying the Duck metaphor against management concepts. When I was going over the notes I took while attending Dr. Robert Burgelman’s class during the AeA/Stanford Exec Institute, I found I wrote down his words: “IBM loves Wild Ducks.”
With some quick Googling, I discovered this apparently famous quote from IBM’s Ex-Chairman, Thomas Watson Jr., dating back to 1963 (I’m obviously too young to have known about this. 
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“…You can make wild ducks tame, but you can never make tame ducks wild again. One might also add that the duck who is tamed will never go anywhere any more. We are convinced that any business needs its wild ducks. And in IBM we try not to tame them.”
In fact, as far as I can tell from Googling, the Wild Duck philosophy is well engrained into the IBM culture (at least in the early days).
So, to my wife who gave me that weird look this morning about my choice of metaphor, there you go. 
BTW, I found this inspiring archive of Thomas Watson Jr. writings and quotes. Check it out: IBM’s “Tom Watson Jr. Quoted” web site.
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About Paul
Paul is in charge of Nortel's Incubator and it's Open Innovation Labs. Before Nortel, Paul played leadership roles in large companies like HP, Bank of Montreal, a Silicon Valley 2001 IPO called Riverstone Networks, and ran his own $1M+ consulting business. Paul's current passion is in studying and practicing open innovation models, and unleashing hidden power of innovation that is embedded within many large and complex organizations.