Why Can Stretch Goals Have Unintended Effects?

What business owner or executive hasn’t dreamed of transforming an organisation by achieving seemingly impossible goals through the sheer force of will? In this article, we studied the effect of stretch seemingly impossible goals on innovative behavior and performance of more than 10, 000 service employees of a tech Fortune 500 firm, using multiple sources of data from more than 100 service units. we we demonstrate that stretch goals motivate more capable employees (successful, experienced, senior) to submit useful innovative ideas by combining the motivation of stretch goals with these employees' ability to discern fruitful from futile ideas. Other employees, meanwhile, may “spin their wheels” and submit lower-quality ideas based on their inability to apply useful knowledge.