Ideas management: What if there are no ideas?

‘Innovation starts from the top’ is a frequently used phrase; but there are many steps involved in a successful innovation strategy. What unfortunately I too often see, and in many organizations, is a huge gap between top management thinking and the understanding in the rest of the organization about innovation. Everybody might agree that innovation is important in principle. They might even be in agreement about the particular process that could bring new ideas to fruition, and implement new thinking in an innovation. This is all fine – but what if there are no new ideas?